Delusion and Dream: an Interpretation in the Light of Psychoanalysis of Gradiva, a Novel by Wilhelm Jensen

DELUSION AND DREAM

Ail Interpretation in the Light of Psychoanalysis
of Gradiva, a Novel, by Wilhelm Jensen,
Which is Here Translated

BY

DR. SIGMUND FREUD

Author of "Wit and Its Relation to the Unconscious,"
"Leonardo da Vinci," etc.

TRANSLATED BY

HELEN M. DOWNEY, M.A.

INTRODUCTION BY

DR. G. STANLEY HALL
President of Clark University

NEW YORK

MOFFAT, YARD AND COMPANY

1917

Hoshl^i Digital Publications

Copyright, 1917, by MOFFAT. YARD AND COMPANY
Published Septan btr, 1917

PREFACE

To Dr. G. Stanley Hall, President of Clark University, who
first called to my attention the charm of "Gradiva," by Wilhelm
Jensen, and suggested the possibility of the translation and pub-
lication combined with the translation of Freud's commentary, I
am deeply grateful for his kindly interest and effort in connection
with the publication of the book, and his assistance with the
technical terms of psychopafhology.

In this connection I am also indebted to Dr. Smith Ely Jelliffe,
who gave many helpful suggestions as a result of his thorough
reading of die manuscript of the commentary.

I wish also to express my profound appreciation to my friend,
Miss M. Evelyn Eitzsimmons, for her generous help with the orig-
inal manuscript and other valuable comments offered while she
was reading the entire proof.

HELEN M. DOWNEY.
Worcester, Mass.
July 16,1917.

INTRODUCTION

Jensen's brilliant and unique story of "Gradiva" has not only
literary merit of very high order, but may be said to open up a new
field for romance. It is the story of a young archeologist who suf-
fered a very characteristic mental disturbance and was gradually
but effectively cured by a kind of native psychotherapeutic instinct,
which probably inheres in all of us, but which in this case was
found in the girl he formerly loved but had forgotten, and who re-
stored at the same time his health and his old affection for her.

Perhaps the most extraordinary thing about the work is that
the author knew nothing of psychotherapy as such, but wrought
his way through the labyrinth of mechanisms that he in a sense re-
discovered and set to work, so that it needed only the application
of technical terms to make this romance at the same time a pretty
good key to the whole domain of psychoanalysis. In a sense it is a
dream-story, but no single dream ever began to be so true to the
typical nature of dreams; it is a clinical picture, but I can think of
no clinical picture that had its natural human interest so enhanced
by a moving romance. "Gradiva" might be an introduction to psy-
choanalysis, and is better than anything else we can think of to
popularize it.

It might be added that while this romance has been more thor-
oughly analyzed than any other, and that by Freud himself, it is
really only one of many which in the literature of the subject have
been used to show forth the mysterious ways of the unconscious.
It indicates that psychoanalysis has a future in literary criticism, if
not that all art and artists have, from the beginning, more or less
anticipated as they now illustrate it.

The translator is thoroughly competent and has done her
work with painstaking conscientiousness, and she has had the great
advantage of having it revised, especially with reference to the
translation of technical terms from the German, by no less an
eminent expert in psychotherapy than Dr. Smith Ely Jelliffe.

G. STANLEY HALL.

CONTENTS

PREFACE

INTRODUCTION, by Dr. G Stanley Hall

PARTI

GRADIVA, a novel by Wilhelm Jensen

PART II

DELUSION AND DREAM, in Gradiva, by Dr. Siemund Freud

NOTES

PARTI
GRADIVA

A Pompeiian Fancy

BY

WILHELM JENSEN

GRADIVA

ON a visit to one of the great antique collections of Rome,
Norbert Hanold had discovered, a bas-relief which was exception-
ally attractive to him, so he was much pleased, after his return to
German)', to be able to get a splendid plaster-cast of it. This had
now been hanging for some years on one of the walls of his work-
room, all the other walls of which were lined with bookcases. Here
it had the advantage of a position with the right light exposure, on
a wall visited, though but briefly, by the evening sun. About one
third life-size, die bas-relief represented a complete female figure
in die act of walking; she was still young, but no longer in child-
hood and, on the odier hand, apparently not a woman, but a Ro-
man virgin about in her twentieth year. In no way did she remind
one of the numerous extant bas-reliefs of a Venus, a Diana, or
odier Olympian goddess, and equally little of a Psyche or nymph.
In her was embodied something humanly commonplace— not in a
bad sense— to a degree a sense of present time, as if die artist, in-
stead of making a pencil sketch of her on a sheet of paper, as is
done in our day, had fixed her in a clay model quickly, from life,
as she passed on the street, a tall, slight figure, whose soft, wavy
hair a folded kerchief almost completely bound; her rather slen-
der face was not at all dazzling; and die desire to produce such ef-
fect was obviously equally foreign to her; in the delicately formed
features was expressed a nonchalant equanimity in regard to what
was occurring about her; her eye, which gazed calmly ahead, be-
spoke absolutely unimpaired powers of vision and thoughts quietly
withdrawn. So the young woman was fascinating, not at all because
of plastic beauty of form, but because she possessed something
rare in antique sculpture, a realistic, simple, maidenly grace which
gave die impression of imparting life to die relief. This was ef-
fected chiefly by the movement represented in the picture. With
her head bent forward a little, she held slightly raised in her left
hand, so that her sandaled feet became visible, her garment which
fell in exceedingly voluminous folds from her throat to her ankles.
The left foot had advanced, and the right, about to follow, touched
the ground only lightly with the tips of the toes, while the sole and
heel were raised almost vertically. This movement produced a
double impression of exceptional agility and of confident com-
posure, and the flight-like poise, combined with a firm step, lent
her die peculiar grace.

Where had she walked thus and whither was she going? Doc-
tor Norbert Hanold, docent of archaeology, really found in die re-
lief nothing notewordiy for his science. It was not a plastic pro-
duction of great art of die antique times, but was essentially a Ro-

man genre production and he could not explain what quality in it
had aroused his attention; he knew only that he had been attract-
ed by something and this effect of the first view had remained un-
changed since then. In order to bestow a name upon the piece of
sculpture, he had called it to himself Gradiva, "the girl splendid in
walking." That was an epithet applied by the ancient poets solely
to Mars Gradivus, the war-god going out to battle, yet to Norbert it
seemed the most appropriate designation for the bearing and
movement of the young girl, or, according to the expression of our
day, of the young lady, for obviously she did not belong to a lower
class but was the daughter of a nobleman, or at any rate was of
honorable family. Perhaps— her appearance brought the idea to his
mind involuntarily— she might be of the family of a patrician aedile
whose office was connected with the worship of Ceres, and she
was on her way to the temple of the goddess on some errand.

Yet it was contrary to the young archaeologist's feeling to put
her in the frame of great, noisy, cosmopolitan Rome. To his mind,
her calm, quiet manner did not belong in this complex machine
where no one heeded another, but she belonged rather in a smal-
ler place where every one knew her, and, stopping to glance after
her, said to a companion, "That is Gradiva"— her real name
Norbert could not supply— "the daughter of — , she walks more
beautifully than any other girl in our city."

As if he had heard it thus with his own ears, the idea had
become firmly rooted in his mind, where another supposition had
developed almost into a conviction. On his Italian journey, he had
spent several weeks in Pompeii studying the ruins; and in Ger-
many, the idea had suddenly come to him one day that the girl
depicted by the relief was walking there, somewhere, on the
peculiar stepping-stones which have been excavated; these had
made a dry crossing possible in rainy weather, but had afforded
passage for chariot-wheels. Thus he saw her putting one foot
across the interstice while the other was about to follow, and as he
contemplated the girl, her immediate and more remote environ-
ment rose before his imagination like an actuality. It created for
him, with the aid of his knowledge of antiquity, the vista of a long
street, among the houses of which were many temples and
porticoes. Different kinds of business and trades, stalls, work-
shops, taverns came into view; bakers had their breads on display;
earthenware jugs, set into marble counters, offered everything re-
quisite for household and kitchen; at the street corner sat a woman
offering vegetables and fruit for sale from baskets; from a half
dozen large walnuts she had removed half of the shell to show the
meat, fresh and sound, as a temptation for purchasers. Wherever
the eye turned, it fell upon lively colors, gaily painted wall surfaces,
pillars with red and yellow capitals; everything reflected the glitter
and glare of the dazzling noonday sun. Farther off on a high base

rose a gleaming, white statue, above which, in the distance, half
veiled by the tremulous vibrations of the hot air, loomed Mount
Vesuvius not yet in its present cone shape and brown aridity, but
covered to its furrowed, rocky peak with glistening verdure. In the
street only a few people moved about, seeking shade wherever
possible, for the scorching heat of the summer noon hour para-
lyzed the usually bustling activities. There Gradiva walked over the
stepping-stones and scared away from them a shimmering, golden-
green lizard.

Thus the picture stood vividly before Norbert Hanold's eyes,
but from daily contemplation of her head, another new conjecture
had gradually arisen. The cut of her features seemed to him, more
and more, not Roman or Latin, but Greek, so that her Hellenic
ancestry gradually became for him a certainty. The ancient settle-
ment of all southern Italy by Greeks offered sufficient ground for
that, and more ideas pleasandy associated with die settlers de-
veloped. Then the young "domina" had perhaps spoken Greek in
her parental home, and had grown up fostered by Greek culture.
Upon closer consideration he found this also confirmed by the ex-
pression of die face, for quite decidedly wisdom and a delicate
spirituality lay hidden beneath her modesty.

These conjectures or discoveries could, however, establish no
real archaeological interest in die little relief and Norbert was well
aware that something else, which no doubt might be under the
head of science, made him return to frequent contemplation of
the likeness. For him it was a question of critical judgment as to
whether die artist had reproduced Gradiva's manner of walking
from life. About that he could not become absolutely certain, and
his rich collection of copies of antique plastic works did not help
him in this matter. The nearly vertical position of die right foot
seemed exaggerated; in all experiments which he himself made,
the movement left his rising foot always in a much less upright
position; madiematically formulated, his stood, during the brief
moment of lingering, at an angle of only forty-five degrees from
the ground, and this seemed to him natural for die mechanics of
walking, because it served the purpose best. Once he used the pre-
sence of a young anatomist friend as an opportunity for raising the
question, but die latter was not able to deliver a definite decision,
as he had made no observations in this connection. He confirmed
die experience of his friend, as agreeing with his own, but could
not say whedier a woman's manner of walking was different from
that of a man, and die question remained unanswered.

In spite of this, the discussion had not been without profit, for
it suggested something that had not formerly occurred to him;
namely, observation from life for die purpose of enlightenment on
the matter. That forced him, to be sure, to a mode of action ut-
terly foreign to him; women had formerly been for him only a

conception in marble or bronze and he had never given his
feminine contemporaries the least consideration; but his desire for
knowledge transported him into a scientific passion in which he
surrendered himself to the peculiar investigation which he recog-
nized as necessary. This was hindered by many difficulties in the
human throng of the large city, and results of the research were to
be hoped for only in the less frequented streets. Yet, even there,
long skirts generally made the mode of walking undiscernible, for
almost no one but housemaids wore short skirts and they, with the
exception of a few, because of their heavy shoes could not well be
considered in solving the question. In spite of this he steadfasdy
continued his survey in dry, as well as in wet weather; he perceived
that the latter promised the quickest results, for it caused the ladies
to raise dieir skirts. To many ladies, his searching glances directed
at their feet must have inevitably been quite noticeable; sometimes
a displeased expression of the lady observed showed that she con-
sidered his demeanor a mark of boldness or ill-breeding; some-
times, as he was a young man of very captivating appearance, die
opposite, a bit of encouragement, was expressed by a pair of eyes.
Yet one was as incomprehensible to him as the other. Gradually
his perseverance resulted in the collection of a considerable num-
ber of observations, which brought to his attention many dif-
ferences. Some walked slowly, some fast, some ponderously,
some buoyantly. Many let their soles merely glide over the
ground; not many raised them more obliquely to a smarter
position. Among all, however, not a single one presented to view
Gradiva's manner of walking. That filled him with satisfaction that
he had not been mistaken in his archaeological judgment of the
relief. On the odier hand, however, his observations caused him
annoyance, for he found die vertical position of die lingering foot
beautiful, and regretted diat it had been created by the imagination
or arbitrary act of the sculptor and did not correspond to reality.

Soon after his pedestrian investigations had yielded him this
knowledge, he had, one night, a dream which caused him great
anguish of mind. In it he was in old Pompeii, and on the twenty-
fourth of August of die year 79, which witnessed the eruption of
Vesuvius. The heavens held die doomed city wrapped in a black
mande of smoke; only here and diere die flaring masses of flame
from the crater made distinguishable, through a rift, somediing
steeped in blood-red light; all the inhabitants, either individually or
in confused crowd, stunned out of their senses by die unusual hor-
ror, sought safety in flight; die pebbles and die rain of ashes fell
down on Norbert also, but, after the strange manner of dreams,
they did not hurt him, and in die same way, he smelled the deadly
sulphur fumes of the air widiout having his breathing impeded by
them. As he stood thus at die edge of die Forum near die Jupiter
temple, he suddenly saw Gradiva a short distance in front of him.

Until then no thought of her presence there had moved him, but
now suddenly it seemed natural to him, as she was, of course, a
Pompeiian girl, that she was living in her native city and, widiout
his having any suspicion of it, was his contemporary. He re-
cognized her at first glance; die stone model of her was splendidly
striking in every detail, even to her gait; involuntarily he designated
diis as "lente festinans." So with buoyant composure and die calm
unmindfulness of her surroundings peculiar to her, she walked
across the flagstones of die Forum to the Temple of Apollo. She
seemed not to notice the impending fate of the city, but to be
given up to her thoughts; on that account he also forgot die
frightful occurrence, for at least a few moments, and because of a
feeling tiiat the living reality would quickly disappear from him
again, he tried to impress it accurately on his mind. Then, how-
ever, he became suddenly aware tiiat if she did not quickly save
herself, she must perish in the general destruction, and violent fear
forced from him a cry of warning. She heard it, too, for her head
turned toward him so that her face now appeared for a moment in
full view, yet with an utterly uncomprehending expression; and,
without paying any more attention to him, she continued in the
same direction as before. At the same time, her face became paler
as if it were changing to white marble; she stepped up to the por-
tico of die Temple, and then, between the pillars, she sat down on
a step and slowly laid her head upon it. Now the pebbles were
falling in such masses that they condensed into a completely
opaque curtain; hastening quickly after her, however, he found his
way to the place where she had disappeared from his view, and
there she lay, protected by the projecting roof, stretched out on
the broad step, as if for sleep, but no longer breathing, apparently
stifled by die sulphur fumes. From Vesuvius the red glow flared
over her countenance, which, with closed eyes, was exactly like
that of a beautiful statue. No fear nor distortion was apparent, but
a strange equanimity, calmly submitting to the inevitable, was man-
ifest in her features. Yet they quickly became more indistinct as
die wind drove to the place the rain of ashes, which spread over
them, first like a gray gauze veil, then extinguished die last glimpse
of her face, and soon, like a Northern winter snowfall, buried the
whole figure under a smooth cover. Outside, die pillars of die
Temple of Apollo rose, now, however, only half of them, for the
gray fall of ashes heaped itself likewise against them.

When Norbert Hanold awoke, he still heard the confused
cries of die Pompeiians who w r ere seeking safety, and die dully re-
sounding boom of the surf of die turbulent sea. Then he came to
his senses; the sun cast a golden gleam of light across his bed; it
was an April morning and outside sounded die various noises of
the city, cries of venders, and die rumbling of vehicles. Yet the
dream picture still stood most distinctly in every detail before his

open eyes, and some time was necessary before he could get rid of
a feeling that he had really been present at die destruction on the
bay of Naples, diat night nearly two thousand years ago. While he
was dressing, he first became gradually free from it, yet he did not
succeed, even by die use of critical thought, in breaking away from
the idea that Gradiva had lived in Pompeii and had been buried
there in 79. Rather, die former conjecture had now become to
him an established certainty and now the second also was added.
With woful feeling he now viewed in his living-room the old relief
which had assumed new significance for him. It was, in a way, a
tombstone by which die artist had preserved for posterity die like-
ness of the girl who had so early departed this life. Yet if one
looked at her with enlightened understanding, the expression of
her whole being left no doubt diat, on that fateful night, she had
actually lain down to die with just such calm as die dream had
showed. An old proverb says that the darlings of die gods are
taken from the eardi in die full vigor of youdi.

Without having yet put on a collar, in morning array, with
slippers on his feet, Norbert leaned on die open window and
gazed out. The spring, which had finally arrived in the nordi also,
was without, but announced itself in die great quarry of the city
only by the blue sky and die soft air, yet a foreboding of it reached
die senses, and awoke in remote, sunny places a desire for leaf-
green, fragrance and bird song; a breath of it came as far as this
place; die market women on the street had dieir baskets adorned
with a few, bright wild flowers, and at an open window, a canary in
a cage warbled his song. Norbert felt sorry for die poor fellow for,
beneath the clear tone, in spite of die joyful note, he heard the
longing for freedom and the open.

Yet die thoughts of the young archaeologist dallied but briefly
there, for something else had crowded into them. Not until then
had he become aware diat in the dream he had not noticed exactly
whether die living Gradiva had really walked as die piece of
sculpture represented her, and as die women of to-day, at any rate,
did not walk. That was remarkable because it was the basis of his
scientific interest in the relief; on the odier hand, it could be ex-
plained by his excitement over die danger to her life. He tried, in
vain, however, to recall her gait.

Then suddenly something like a thrill passed through him; in
the first moment he could not say whence. But then he realized;
down in the street, with her back toward him, a female, from fig-
ure and dress undoubtedly a young lady, was walking along with
easy, elastic step. Her dress, which reached only to her ankles, she
held lifted a little in her left hand, and he saw diat in walking the
sole of her slender foot, as it followed, rose for a moment ver-
tically on die tips of die toes. It appeared so, but die distance and
the fact diat he was looking down did not admit of certainty.

Quickly Norbert Hanold was in the street without yet knowing
exactly how he had come there. He had, like a boy sliding down a
railing, flown like lightning down the steps, and was running down
among the carriages, carts and people. The latter directed looks of
wonder at him, and from several lips came laughing, half mocking
exclamations. He was unaware that these referred to him; his
glance was seeking the young lady and he thought that he dis-
tinguished her dress a few dozen steps ahead of him, but only the
upper part; of the lower half, and of her feet, he could perceive
nothing, for they were concealed by the crowd thronging on the
sidewalk.

Now an old, comfortable, vegetable woman stretched her
hand toward his sleeve, stopped him and said half grinning, "Say,
my dear, you probably drank a little too much last night and are
you looking for your bed here in the street? You would do better
to go home and look at yourself in the mirror."

A burst of laughter from those nearby proved it true that he
had shown himself in garb not suited to public appearance, and
brought him now to realization that he had heedlessly run from
his room. That surprised him because he insisted upon con-
ventionality of attire and, forsaking his project, he quickly returned
home, apparently however, with his mind still somewhat confused
by the dream and dazed by illusion, for he had perceived that, at
the laughter and exclamation, the young lady had turned her head
a moment and he thought he had seen not the face of a stranger,
but that of Gradiva looking down upon him.

Because of considerable property, Doctor Norbert Hanold
was in the pleasant position of being unhampered master of his
own acts and wishes and, upon the appearance of any inclination,
of not depending for expert counsel about it on any higher court
than his own decision. In this way he differed most favorably from
the canary, who could only warble out, without success, his inborn
impulse to get out of the cage into die sunny open. Otherwise,
however, the young archaeologist resembled the latter in many
respects. He had not come into the world and grown up in natural
freedom, but already at birth had been hedged in by the grating
with which family tradition, by education and predestination, had
surrounded him. From his early childhood no doubt had existed
in his parents' house that he, as the only son of a university pro-
fessor and antiquarian, was called upon to preserve, if possible to
exalt, by that very activity the glory of his father's name; so this
business continuity had always seemed to him the natural task of
his future. He had clung loyally to it even after the early deaths of
his parents had left him absolutely alone; in connection with his
brilliantly passed examination in philology, he had taken the pre-
scribed student trip to Italy and had seen in the original a number

of old works of art whose imitations, only, had formerly been ac-
cessible to him. Nothing more instructive for him than the collec-
tions of Florence, Rome, Naples could be offered anywhere; he
could furnish evidence that the period of his stay there had been
used excellently for the enrichment of his knowledge, and he had
returned home fully satisfied to devote himself with the new ac-
quisitions to his science. That besides these objects from the dis-
tant past, the present still existed round about him, he felt only in
the most shadowy way; for his feelings marble and bronze were
not dead, but rather the only really vital tiling which expressed the
purpose and value of human life; and so he sat in the midst of his
walls, books and pictures, with no need of any other intercourse,
but whenever possible avoiding the latter as an empty squandering
of time and only very reluctantly submitting occasionally to an in-
evitable party, attendance at which was required by the connec-
tions handed down from his parents. Yet it was known that at such
gatherings he was present without eyes or ears for his surround-
ings, and as soon as it was any way permissible, he always took his
leave, under some pretext, at the end of the lunch or dinner, and
on the street he greeted none of those whom he had sat with at the
table. That served, especially with young ladies, to put him in a
rather unfavorable light; for upon meeting even a girl with whom
he had, by way of exception, spoken a few words, he looked at her
without a greeting as at a quite unknown person whom he had
never seen. Although perhaps archaeology, in itself, might be a
rather curious science and although its alloy had effected a
remarkable amalgamation with Norbert Hanold's nature, it could
not exercise much attraction for others and afforded even him
little enjoyment in life according to the usual \iews of youth. Yet
with a perhaps kindly intent Nature had added to his blood, with-
out his knowing of the possession, a kind of corrective of a
thoroughly unscientific sort, an unusually lively imagination which
was present not only in dreams, but often in his waking hours, and
essentially made his mind not preponderandy adapted to strict re-
search method devoid of interest. From this endowment, how r -
ever, originated another similarity between him and the canary.
The latter was born in captivity, had never known anything else
dian die cage which confined him in narrow quarters, but he had
an inner feeling diat somediing was lacking to him, and sounded
from his diroat his desire for the unknown. Thus Norbert Hanold
understood it, pitied him for it, returned to his room, leaned again
from die window and was diereupon moved by a feeling that he,
too, lacked a nameless something. Meditation on it, therefore,
could be of no use. The indefinite stir of emotion came from the
mild, spring air, the sunbeams and die broad expanse widi its
fragrant breadi, and formed a comparison for him; he was likewise
sitting in a cage behind a grating. Yet this idea was immediately

followed by the palliating one that his position was more ad-
vantageous than that of the canary for he had in his possession
wings which were hindered by nothing from flying out into die
open at his pleasure.

But that was an idea which developed more upon reflection.
Norbert gave himself up for a time to this occupation, yet it was
not long before die project of a spring journey assumed definite
shape. This he carried out diat very day, packed a light valise, and
before he went soudi by the night express, cast at nightfall another
regretful departing glance on Gradiva, who, steeped in the last rays
of die sun, seemed to step out with more buoyancy than ever over
the invisible stepping-stones beneadi her feet. Even if the impulse
for travel had originated in a nameless feeling, furdier reflection
had, however, granted, as a matter of course, diat it must serve a
scientific purpose. It had occurred to him diat he had neglected to
inform himself with accuracy about some important archaeological
questions in connection with some statues in Rome and, widiout
stopping on the way, he made the journey of a day and a half diith-
er.

Not very many personally experience die beauty of going from
Germany to Italy in the spring when one is young, wealthy and
independent, for even those endowed with the three latter require-
ments are not always accessible to such a feeling for beauty,
especially if diey (and alas they form the majority) are in couples
on the days or weeks after a wedding, for such allow nothing to
pass without an extraordinary delight, which is expressed in
numerous superlatives; and finally they bring back home, as profit,
only what they would have discovered, felt or enjoyed exacdy as
much by staying there. In the spring such dualists usually swarm
over die Alpine passes in exactly opposite direction to the birds of
passage. During die whole journey they billed and cooed around
Norbert as if they were in a rolling dove-cot, and for die first time
in his life he was compelled to observe his fellow beings more
closely with eye and ear. Although, from their speech, they were
all German country people, his racial identity with them awoke in
him no feeling of pride, but the rather opposite one, that he had
done reasonably well to bother as little as possible with the homo
sapiens of Linnaean classification, especially in connection with
the feminine half of this species; for die first time he saw also, in
his immediate vicinity, people brought together by the mating
impulse without his being able to understand what had been the
mutual cause. It remained incomprehensible to him why the wom-
en had chosen these men, and still more perplexing why the
choice of the men had fallen upon these women. Every time he
raised his eyes, his glance had to fall on the face of some one of
them and it found none which charmed the eye by outer attraction

or possessed indication of intellect or good nature. To be sure, he
lacked a standard for measuring, for of course one could not com-
pare die women of today, widi die sublime beauty of die old
works of art, yet he had a dark suspicion that he was not to blame
for diis unkind view, but diat in all expressions there was some-
thing lacking which ordinary life was in duty bound to offer. So he
reflected for many hours on die strange impulses of human
beings, and came to the conclusion diat of all their follies, mar-
riage, at any rate, took the prize as the greatest and most incom-
prehensible one, and the senseless wedding trips to Italy somehow
capped die climax of diis buffoonery.

Again, however, he was reminded of the canary diat he had
left behind in captivity, for he also sat here in a cage, cooped in by
the faces of young bridal couples which were as rapturous as vap-
id, past which his glance could only occasionally stray dirough the
window. Therefore it can be easily explained diat die things pas-
sing outside before his eyes made other impressions on him dian
when he had seen diem some years before. The olive foliage had
more of a silver sheen; the solitary, towering cypresses and pines
here and diere were delineated with more beautiful and more dis-
tinctive outlines; the places situated on the mountain heights
seemed to him more charming, as if each one, in a manner, were
an individual with different expression; and Trasimene Lake
seemed to him of a soft blue such as he had never noticed in any
surface of water. He had a feeling that a Nature unknown to him
was surrounding die railway tracks, as if he must have passed
through these places before in continual twilight, or during a gray
rainfall, and was now seeing them for die first time in their golden
abundance of color. A few times he surprised himself in a desire,
formerly unknown to him, to alight and seek afoot die way to this
or diat place because it looked to him as if it might be concealing
something peculiar or mysterious. Yet he did not allow himself to
be misled by such unreasonable impulses, but the "diretissimo"
took him directly to Rome where, already, before die entrance
into die station, the ancient world with the ruins of die temple of
Minerva Medica received him. When he had finally freed himself
from his cage filled with "inseparables," he immediately secured
accommodations in a hotel well known to him, in order to look
about from there, without excessive haste, for a private house
satisfactory to him.

Such a one he had not yet found in the course of die next day,
but returned to his "albergo" again in the evening and went to
sleep rather exhausted by the unaccustomed Italian air, the strong
sun, much wandering about and the noise of die streets. Soon con-
sciousness began to fade, but just as he was about to fall asleep he
was again awakened, for his room was connected with die ad-
joining one by a door concealed only by a wardrobe, and into this

came two guests, who had taken possession of it that morning.
From the voices which sounded through die dlin partition, diey
were a man and a woman who unmistakably belonged to diat class
of German spring birds of passage with whom he had yesterday
journeyed hither from Florence. Their frame of mind seemed to
give decidedly favorable testimony concerning the hotel cuisine
and it might be due to the good quality of a Castellin-romani wine
diat they exchanged ideas and feelings most distinctly and audibly
in North German tongue:

"My only Augustus."

"My sweet Gretchen."

"Now again we have each other."

"Yes, at last we are alone again."

"Must we do more sight-seeing to-morrow?"

"At breakfast we shall look in Baedeker for what is still to be
done."

"My only Augustus, to me you are much more pleasing than
Apollo Belvedere."

"And I have often thought, my sweet Gretchen, diat you are
much more beautiful than the Capitoline Venus."

"Is die volcano diat we want to climb near here?"

"No, I think we'll have to ride a few hours more in the train to
get diere."

"If it should begin to belch flame just as we got to die middle,
what would you do?"

"Then my only diought would be to save you, and I would
take you in my arms— so."

"Don't scratch yourself on that pin! "

"I can think of nothing more beautiful than to shed my blood
for you."

"My only Augustus."

"My sweet Gretchen."

Widi that the conversation ceased, Norbert heard another ill-
defined rustiing and moving of chairs, then it became quiet and he
fell back into a doze which transported him to Pompeii just as Ve-
suvius again began its eruption. A vivid dirong of fleeing people
caught him and among them he saw Apollo Belvedere lift up the
Capitoline Venus, take her away and place her safely upon some
object in a dark shadow; it seemed to be a carriage or cart on
which she was to be carried off, for a rattling sound was soon
heard from diat direction. This mythological occurrence did not
amaze the young archaeologist, but it struck him as remarkable
that die two talked German, not Greek, to each odier for, as they
half regained their senses, he heard them say:

"My sweet Gretchen."

"My only Augustus."

But after that the dream picture changed completely. Absolute
silence took the place of the confused sound, and instead of
smoke and fire -glow, bright, hot sunlight rested on the ruins of the
buried city. This likewise changed gradually, became a bed on
whose white linen golden beams circled up to his eyes, and Nor-
bert Hanold awoke in the scintillating spring morning of Rome.

Within him, also, however, something had changed; why, he
could not surmise, but a strangely oppressive feeling had again tak-
en possession of him, a feeling that he was imprisoned in a cage
which this time was called Rome. As he opened the window, there
screamed up from the street dozens of venders' cries far more
shrill to his ear than those in his German home; he had come only
from one noisy quarry to another, and a strangely uncanny horror
of antique collections, of meeting there Apollo Belvedere or the
Capitoline Venus, frightened him away. Thus, after brief con-
sideration, he refrained from his intention of looking for a dwel-
ling, hastily packed his valise again and went farther south by train.
To escape the "inseparables," he did this in a third class coach, ex-
pecting at the same time to find there an interesting and
scientifically useful company of Italian folk-types, the former mod-
els of antique works of art. Yet he found nothing but the usual
dirt, Monopol cigars which smelled horribly, little warped fellows
beating about with arms and legs, and members of the female sex,
in contrast to whom his coupled country-women seemed to his
memory almost like Olympian goddesses.

Two days later Norbert Hanold occupied a rather question-
able space called a "room" in Hotel Diomed beside the eucalyp-
tus-guarded "ingresso" to the excavations of Pompeii. He had
intended to stay in Naples for some time to study again more
closely the sculptures and wall- paintings in the Museo Nazionale,
but he had had an experience there similar to that in Rome. In the
room for the collection of Pompeiian household furniture he
found himself wrapped in a cloud of feminine, ultra-fashionable
travel-costumes, which had doubtless all quickly replaced the vir-
gin radiance of satin, silk or lace bridal finery; each one clung to
the arm of a young or old companion, likewise faultlessly attired,
according to men's fashion standards; and Norbert's newly gained
insight into a field of knowledge formerly unknown to him had
advanced so far as to permit him to recognize them at first glance;
every man was Augustus, every girl was Gretchen. Only this came
to light here by means of other forms of conversation tempered,
moderated and modified by the ear of publicity.

"Oh, look, that was practical of them; we'll surely have to get a
meat warmer like that too."

"Yes, but for the food that my wife cooks it must be made of
silver."

"How do you know that what I cook will taste so good to
your

The question was accompanied by a roguish, arch glance and
was answered in the affirmative, with a glance varnished with lac-
quer, "What you serve to me can be nothing but delicious."

"No; that surely is a thimble! Did the people of those days
have needles?"

"It almost seems so, but you could not have done anything
with that, my darling, it would be much too large even for your
thumb."

"Do you really think that? And do you like slender fingers bet-
ter than broad ones?"

"Yours I do not need to see; by touch I could discover them,
in the deepest darkness, among all the others in the world."

"That is really awfully interesting. Do we still really have to go
to Pompeii also?"

"No, that will hardly pay; there are only old stones and rubbish
there; whatever was of value, Baedeker says, was brought here. I
fear the sun there would be too hot for your delicate complexion
and I could never forgive myself that."

"What if you should suddenly have a negress for a wife?"

"No, my imagination fortunately does not reach that far, but a
freckle on your little nose would make me unhappy. I think, if it is
agreeable to you, we'll go to Capri to-morrow, my dear. There
everything is said to be very comfortable and in the wonderful light
of the Blue Grotto I shall first realize completely what a great prize
I have drawn in the lottery of happiness."

"You— if any one hears that, I shall be almost ashamed. But
wherever you take me, it is agreeable to me, and makes no dif-
ference, for I have you with me."

Augustus and Gretchen over again, somewhat toned down and
tempered for eye and ear. It seemed to Norbert Hanold that he
had had thin honey poured upon him from all sides and that he
had to dispose of it swallow by swallow. A sick feeling came over
him and he ran out of die Museo Nazionale to die nearest "oste-
ria" to drink a glass of vermouth. Again and again die diought
intruded itself upon his mind: —Why did these hundred fold
dualities fill die museums of Florence, Rome, Naples, instead of
devoting themselves to their plural occupations in their native
Germany? Yet from a number of chats and tender talks, it seemed
to him diat the majority of these bird couples did not intend to
nest in the rubbish of Pompeii, but considered a side trip to Capri
much more profitable, and thence originated his sudden impulse
to do what they did not do. There was at any rate offered to him a
chance to be freed from the main flock of this migration and to
find what he was vainly seeking here in Italy. That was also a du-
ality, not a wedding duality, but two members of the same family

without cooing bills, silence and science, two calm sisters with
whom only one could count upon satisfactory shelter. His desire
for them contained something formerly unknown to him; if it had
not been a contradiction in itself, he could have applied to this
impulse the epithet "passionate"— and an hour later he was already
sitting in a "carrozzella" which bore him through the interminable
Portici and Resina. The journey was like one through a street
splendidly adorned for an old Roman victor; to the right and left
almost every house spread out to dry in the sun, like yellow tap-
estry hangings, a superabundant wealth of "pasta di Napoli," the
greatest dainty of the country, thick or thin macaroni, vermicelli,
spaghetti, canelloni and fidelini, to which smoke of fats from cook-
shops, dust-clouds, flies and fleas, the fish scales flying about in the
air, chimney smoke and other day and night influences lent the fa-
miliar delicacy of its taste. Then the cone of Vesuvius looked
down close by across brown lava fields; at the right extended the
gulf of shimmering blue, as if composed of liquid malachite and
lapis lazuli. The little nutshell on wheels flew, as if whirled forth by
a mad storm and as if every moment must be its last, over the
dreadful pavement of Torre del Greco, rattled through Torre
dell'Annunziata, reached the Dioscuri, Hotel Suisse and Hotel
Diomed, which measured their power of attraction in a ceaseless,
silent, but ferocious struggle, and stopped before the latter whose
classic name, again, as on his first visit, had determined the choice
of the young archaeologist. With apparently, at least, the greatest
composure, however, the modern Swiss competitor viewed this
event before its very door. It was calm because no different water
from what it used was boiled in the pots of its classic neighbor; and
the antique splendors temptingly displayed for sale over there had
not come to light again after two thousand years under the ashes,
any more than the ones which it had.

Thus Norbert Hanold, contrary to all expectations and inten-
tions, had been transported in a few days from northern Germany
to Pompeii, found the Diomed not too much filled with human
guests, but on the other hand populously inhabited by the musca
domestica communis, the common house-fly. He had never been
subject to violent emotions; yet a hatred of these two-winged
creatures burned within him; he considered them the basest evil
invention of Nature, on their account much preferred the winter
to the summer as the only time suited to human life, and recog-
nized in them invincible proof against the existence of a rational
world-system. Now they received him here several months earlier
than he would have fallen to their infamy in Germany, rushed im-
mediately about him in dozens, as upon a patiently awaited victim,
whizzed before his eyes, buzzed in his ears, tangled themselves in
his hair, tickled his nose, forehead and hands. Therein many re-
minded him of honeymoon couples, probably were also saying to

each other in their language, "My only Augustus" and "My sweet
Gretchen"; in the mind of die tormented man rose a longing for a
"scacciamosche," a splendidly made fly-flapper like one unearthed
from a burial vault, which he had seen in the Etruscan museum in
Bologna. Thus, in antiquity, this worthless creature had likewise
been the scourge of humanity, more vicious and more inevitable
dian scorpions, venomous snakes, tigers and sharks, which were
bent upon only physical injury, rending or devouring the ones at-
tacked; against the former one could guard himself by thoughtful
conduct. From the common housefly, however, there was no pro-
tection, and it paralyzed, disturbed and finally shattered the psy-
chic life of human beings, their capacity for thinking and working,
every lofty flight of imagination and every beautiful feeling.
Hunger or thirst for blood did not impel them, but solely the dia-
bolical desire to torture; it was the "Ding an sich" in which abso-
lute evil had found its incarnation. The Etruscan "scacciamosche,"
a wooden handle with a bunch of fine leather strips fastened to it,
proved the following: they had destroyed the most exalted poetic
thoughts in the mind of Aeschylus; they had caused the chisel of
Phidias to make an irremediable slip, had run over die brow of
Zeus, the breast of Aphrodite, and from head to foot of all
Olympian gods and goddesses; and Norbert felt in his soul that
die service of a human being was to be estimated, above all, ac-
cording to die number of flies which he had killed, pierced,
burned up or exterminated in hecatombs during his life, as av-
enger of his whole race from remotest antiquity.

For the achievement of such fame, he lacked here the neces-
sary weapon, and like the greatest battle hero of antiquity, who
had, however, been alone and unable to do otherwise, he left the
field, or rather his room, in view of die hundredfold overwhelm-
ing number of the common foe. Outside it dawned upon him that
he had thereby done in a small way what he would have to repeat
on a larger scale on die morrow. Pompeii, too, apparently offered
no peacefully gratifying abode for his needs. To this idea was ad-
ded, at least dimly, another, that his dissatisfaction was certainly
caused not by his surroundings alone, but to a degree found its
origin in him. To be sure, flies had always been very repulsive to
him, but diey had never before transported him into such raging
fury as diis. On account of die journey his nerves were undeniably
in an excited and irritable condition, for which indoor air and
overwork at home during die winter had probably begun to pave
the way. He felt that he was out of sorts because he lacked
something without being able to explain what, and this ill-humor
he took everywhere with him; of course flies and bridal couples
swarming en masse were not calculated to make life agreeable any-
where. Yet if he did not wish to wrap himself in a diick cloud of
self-righteousness, it could not remain concealed from him that he

was traveling around Italy just as aimless, senseless, blind and deaf
as they, only with considerably less capacity for enjoyment. For his
traveling companion, science, had, most decidedly, much of an
old Trappist about her, did not open her mouth when she was not
spoken to, and it seemed to him that he was almost forgetting in
what language he had communed with her.

It was now too late in die day to go into Pompeii dirough die
"ingresso." Norbert remembered a circuit he had once made on
the old city-wall, and attempted to mount the latter by means of all
sorts of bushes and wild growth. Thus he wandered along for
some distance a little above the city of graves, which lay on his
right, motionless and quiet. It looked like a dead rubbish field al-
ready almost covered with shadow, for die evening sun stood in
the west not far from the edge of die Tyrrhenian Sea. Round
about on the odier hand it still bathed all die hilltops and fields
with an enchanting brilliancy of life, gilded the smoke-cone rising
above the Vesuvius crater and clad die peaks and pinnacles of
Monte Sant' Angelo in purple. High and solitary rose Monte Epo-
meo from die sparkling, blue sea glittering with golden light, from
which Cape Misenum reared itself with dark outline, like a myster-
ious, titanic structure. Wherever the gaze rested, a wonderful pic-
ture was spread combining charm and sublimity, remote past and
joyous present. Norbert Hanold had expected to find here what
he longed for vaguely. Yet he was not in die mood for it, although
no bridal couples and flies molested him on the deserted wall; ev-
en nature was unable to offer him what he lacked in his sur-
roundings and widiin himself. With a calmness bordering closely
on indifference, he let his eyes pass over die all-pervading beauty,
and did not regret in the least diat it was growing pale and fading
away in die sunset, but returned to die Diomed, as he had come,
dissatisfied.

But as he had now, aldiough with ill-success, been conveyed to
this place through his indiscretion, he reached die decision over-
night, to get from the folly he had committed at least one day of
scientific profit and went to Pompeii on die regular road as soon
as the "ingresso" was opened in the morning. In little groups com-
manded by official guides, armed with red Baedekers or dieir for-
eign cousins, longing for secret excavations of their own, diere
wandered before and behind him the population of the two ho-
tels. The still fresh, morning air was filled almost exclusively by
English or Anglo-American chatter; die German couples were
making each other mutually happy widi German sweets and in-
spiration up there on Capri behind Monte Sant' Angelo at the
breakfast table of die Pagano. Norbert remembered how to free
himself soon, by well chosen words, combined with a good "man-
cia," from die burden of a "guida" and was able to pursue his pur-

poses alone and unhindered. It afforded him some satisfaction to
know that he possessed a faultless memory; wherever his glance
rested, everything lay and stood exacdy as he remembered it, as if
only yesterday he bad imprinted it in his mind by means of expert
observation. This continually repeated experience brought, how-
ever, the added feeling diat his presence there seemed really very
unnecessary, and a decided indifference took possession of his
eyes and his intellect more and more, as during die evening on the
wall. Although, when he looked up, die pine-shaped smoke-cone
of Vesuvius generally stood before him against the blue sky, yet,
remarkably, it did not once appear in his memory diat he had
dreamed some time ago that he had been present at the de-
struction of Pompeii by the volcanic eruption of 79. Wandering
around for hours made him tired and half-sleepy, of course, yet he
felt not die least suggestion of anydiing dreamlike, but diere lay
about him only a confusion of fragments of ancient gate arches,
pillars and walls significant to the highest degree for archaeology,
but, viewed without die esoteric aid of this science, really not
much else than a big pile of rubbish, neady arranged, to be sure,
but extremely devoid of interest; and although science and dreams
were wont formerly to stand on footings exactly opposed, they had
apparendy here to-day come to an agreement to withdraw their aid
from Norbert Hanold and deliver him over absolutely to the aim-
lessness of his walking and standing around.

So he had wandered in all directions from die Forum to the
Amphitheater, from die Porta di Stabia to die Porta del Vesuvio
through the Street of Tombs as well as through coundess others,
and die sun had likewise, in the meanwhile, made its accustomed
morning journey to die position where it usually changes to die
more comfortable descent toward die sea. Thereby, to die great
satisfaction of their misunderstood, hoarsely eloquent guides, it
gave die English and American men and women, forced to go
there by a traveler's sense of duty, a signal to become mindful of
the superior comfort of sitting at the lunch-tables of die twin ho-
tels; besides they had seen with dieir own eyes everything diat
could be required for conversation on die odier side of the ocean
and channel; so the separate groups, satiated by die past, started
on the return, ebbed in common movement down through the
Via Marina, in order not to lose meals at die, to be sure somewhat
euphemistically Lucullan, tables of die present, in die house of
Diomed or of Mr. Swiss. In consideration of all the outer and
inner circumstances, this was doubtless also die wisest thing diat
they could do, for die noon sun of May was decidedly well
disposed toward the lizards, butterflies and other winged inhab-
itants or visitors of the extensive mass of ruins, but for the
nordiern complexion of a Madame or Miss its perpendicular
obtrusiveness was unquestionably beginning to become less

kindly, and, supposedly in some causal connection with that, the
"charmings" had already in the last hour considerably diminished,
the "shockings" had increased in the same proportion, and the
masculine "all's" proceeding from rows of teeth even more widely
distended than before had begun a noticeable transition to
yawning.

It was remarkable, however, that simultaneously with their
vanishing, what had formerly been the city of Pompeii assumed an
entirely changed appearance, but not a living one; it now appeared
rather to be becoming completely petrified in dead immobility.
Yet out of it stirred a feeling that death was beginning to talk, al-
though not in a manner intelligible to human ears. To be sure,
here and there was a sound as if a whisper were proceeding from
die stone which, however, only the softly murmuring south wind,
Atabulus, awoke, he who, two thousand years ago, had buzzed in
this fashion about the temples, halls and houses, and was now car-
rying on his playful game with the green, shimmering stalks on the
low ruins. From the coast of Africa he often rushed across casting
fordi wild, full blasts: he was not doing that to-day, but was gently
fanning again die old acquaintances which had come to light again.
He could not, however, refrain from his natural tendency to
devastate, and blew with hot breadi, even though lightly, on every-
thing that he encountered on die way.

In diis, the sun, his eternally youthful mother, helped him.
She strengthened his fiery breath, and accomplished, besides,
what he could not, steeped everydiing with trembling, glittering,
dazzling splendor. As with a golden eraser, she effaced from the
edges of the houses on the semitae and crepidine viaruni, as the
sidewalks were once called, every slight shadow, cast into all the
vestibules, inner courts, peristyles and balconies her luminous ra-
diance, or desultory rays where a shelter blocked her direct ap-
proach. Hardly anywhere was there a nook which successfully
protected itself against the ocean of light and veiled itself in a
dusky, silver web; every street lay between die old walls like long,
rippling, white strips of linen spread out to bleach; and without ex-
ception all were equally motionless and mute, for not only had the
last of die rasping and nasal tones of the English and American
messengers disappeared, but the former slight evidences of lizard-
and butterfly-life seemed also to have left the silent city of ruins.
They had not really done so, but the gaze perceived no more
movement from them.

As had been the custom of dieir ancestors out on the moun-
tain slopes and cliff walls, for thousands of years, when die great
Pan laid himself to sleep, here, too, in order not to disturb him,
they had stretched themselves out motionless or, folding their
wings, had squatted here and diere; and it seemed as if, in this
place, diey felt even more strongly the command of the hot, holy,

noonday quiet in whose ghostly hour life must be silent and
suppressed, because during it the dead awake and begin to talk in
toneless spirit-language.

This changed aspect which the tilings round about had as-
sumed really thrust itself less upon the vision than it aroused the
emotions, or, more correctly, an unnamed sixth sense; this latter,
however, was stimulated so strongly and persistently tiiat a person
endowed with it could not throw off the effect produced upon
him. To be sure, of those estimable boarders already busy with
their soup spoons at the two "alberghi" near the "ingresso," hardly
a man or woman would have been counted among those thus in-
vested, but Nature had once bestowed this great attention upon
Norbert Hanold and he had to submit to its effects, not at all be-
cause he had an understanding with it, however, for he wished
nothing at all and desired nothing more than that he might be sit-
ting quietly in his study with an instructive book in his hand, in-
stead of having undertaken this aimless spring journey. Yet as he
had turned back from the Street of Tombs through the Hercules
gate into the center of the city and at Casa di Sallustio had turned
to the left, quite without purpose or thought, into die narrow
"vicolo," suddenly that sixdi sense was awakened in him; but this
last expression was not really fitting, rather he was transported by it
into a strangely dreamy condition, about half way between a wak-
ing state and loss of senses. As if guarding a secret, everywhere
round about him, suffused in light, lay deathly silence, so breath-
less that even his own lungs hardly dared to take in air. He stood
at the intersection of two streets where the Vicolo Mercurio cros-
sed the broader Strada di Mercurio, which stretched out to right
and left; in answer to the god of commerce, business and trades
had formerly had their abodes here; die street corners spoke si-
lently of it; many shops with broken counters, inlaid with marble,
opened out upon them; here die arrangement indicated a bakery,
there, a number of large, convex, earthenware jugs, an oil or flour
business. Opposite more slender, two-handled jars set into die
counters showed tiiat the space behind diem had been a bar-
room; surely in die evening, slaves and maids of die neighbor-
hood might have thronged here to get wine for their masters in
their own jugs; one could see that die now illegible inscription
inlaid with mosaic on the sidewalk in front of die shop was worn
by many feet; probably it had held out to passers-by a recom-
mendation of the excellent wine. On die outer-wall, at about half
the height of a man, was visible a "graffito" probably scratched into
the plastering, with his finger-nail or an iron nail, by a schoolboy,
perhaps derisively explaining die praise, in this way, that die own-
er's wine owed its peerlessness to a generous addition of water.
For from die scratch there seemed raised before Norbert Han-
old's eyes the word "caupo," or was it an illusion. Certainly he

could not settle it. He possessed a certain skill in deciphering
"graffiti" which were difficult, and had already accomplished
widely recognized work in diat field, yet at this time it completely
failed him. Not only that, he had a feeling that he did not un-
derstand any Latin, and it was absurd of him to wish to read what
a Pompeiian school youth had scratched into the wall two thou-
sand years before.

Not only had all his science left him, but it left him without the
least desire to regain it; he remembered it as from a great distance,
and he felt that it had been an old, dried-up, boresome aunt, dul-
lest and most superfluous creature in the world. What she uttered
with puckered lips and sapient mien, and presented as wisdom,
was all vain, empty pompousness, and merely gnawed at the dry
rind of the fruit of knowledge without revealing anything of its con-
tent, the germ of life, or bringing anything to the point of inner,
intelligent enjoyment. What it taught was a lifeless, archaeological
view and what came from its mouth was a dead, philological
language. These helped in no way to a comprehension with soul,
mind and heart, as the saying is, but he, who possessed a desire for
that, had to stand alone here, the only living person in the hot
noonday silence among the remains of the past, in order not to
see with physical eyes nor hear with corporeal ears. Then some-
thing came forth everywhere without movement and a soundless
speech began; then the sun dissolved the tomb-like rigidity of the
old stones, a glowing thrill passed through them, the dead awoke,
and Pompeii began to live again.

The dioughts in Norbert Hanold's mind were not really blas-
phemous, but he had an indefinite feeling deserving of that adjec-
tive, and with this, standing motionless, he looked before him
down die Strada di Mercurio toward the city-wall. The angular
lava-blocks of its pavement still lay as fauldessly fitted together as
before die devastation, and each one was of a light-gray color, yet
such dazzling luster brooded over diem diat they stretched like a
quilted silver-wiiite ribbon passing in faintly glowing void between
the silent walls and by die side of column fragments.

Then suddenly—

With open eyes he gazed along the street, yet it seemed to him
as if he were doing it in a dream. A little to the right something
suddenly stepped fordi from die Casa di Castore e Polluce, and
across the lava stepping-stones, which led from die house to die
odier side of the Strada di Mercurio, Gradiva stepped buoyandy.

Quite indubitably it was she; even if die sunbeams did sur-
round her figure as with a thin veil of gold, he perceived her in
profile as plainly and as distinctly as on die bas-relief. Her head,
whose crown was entwined with a scarf which fell to her neck,
inclined forward a little; her left hand held up lightly die extremely
voluminous dress and, as it reached only to her ankles, one could

perceive clearly that in advancing, the right foot, lingering, if only
for a moment, rose on the tips of the toes almost perpendicularly.
Here, however, it was not a stone representation, everything in
uniform colorlessness; the dress, apparently made of extremely
soft, clinging material, was not of cold marble-white, but of a warm
tone verging faindy on yellow, and her hair, wavy under the scarf
on her brow, and peeping forth at die temples, stood out, with
golden-brown radiance, in bold contrast to her alabaster coun-
tenance.

As soon as he caught sight of her, Norbert's memory was
clearly awakened to die fact that he had seen her here once
already in a dream, walking dius, the night that she had lain down
as if to sleep over diere in the Forum on die steps of the Temple
of Apollo. With this memory he became conscious, for the first
time, of something else; he had, without himself knowing the mo-
tive in his heart, come to Italy on diat account and had, without
stop, continued from Rome and Naples to Pompeii to see if he
could here find trace of her— and that in a literal sense,— for, with
her unusual gait, she must have left behind in the ashes a foot-
print different from all the others.

Again it was a noonday dream-picture that passed there before
him and yet also a reality. For diat was apparent from an effect
which it produced. On die last stepping-stone on the fardier side,
there lay stretched out motionless, in die burning sunlight, a big
lizard, whose body, as if woven of gold and malachite, glistened
brightly to Norbert's eyes. Before the approaching foot, however,
it darted down suddenly and wriggled away over the white, gleam-
ing lava pavement.

Gradiva crossed the stepping-stones with her calm buoyancy,
and now, turning her back, walked along on the opposite sidewalk;
her destination seemed to be the house of Adonis. Before it she
stopped a moment, too, but passed then, as if after further deliber-
ation, down farther through the Strada di Mercurio. On the left, of
the more elegant buildings, there now stood only die Casa di
Apollo, named after the numerous representations of Apollo
excavated diere, and, to the man who was gazing after her, it
seemed again that she had also surely chosen die portico of the
Temple of Apollo for her deatii sleep. Probably she was closely
associated with die cult of the sun-god and was going there. Soon,
however, she stopped again; stepping-stones crossed die street
here, too, and she walked back again to the right side. Thus she
turned the other side of her face toward him and looked a little
different, for her left hand, which held up her gown, was not
visible and instead of her curved arm, the right one hung down
straight. At a greater distance now, however, die golden waves of
sunlight floated around her with a diicker web of veiling, and did
not allow him to distinguish where she had stopped, for she disap-

peared suddenly before die house of Meleager. Norbert Hanold
still stood without having moved a limb. With his eyes, and this
time with his corporeal ones, he had surveyed, step by step, her
vanishing form. Now, at length, he drew a deep breath, for his
breast too had remained almost motionless.

Simultaneously the sixth sense, suppressing the others com-
pletely, held him absolutely in its sway. Had what had just stood
before him been a product of his imagination or a reality?

He did not know that, nor whether he was awake or dreaming,
and tried in vain to collect his thoughts. Then, however, a strange
shudder passed down his spine. He saw and heard nothing, yet he
felt from the secret inner vibrations that Pompeii had begun to live
about him in the noonday hour of spirits and so Gradiva lived
again, too, and had gone into the house which she had occupied
before the fateful August day of the year 79.

From his former visit, he was acquainted with the Casa di Mel-
eagro, had not yet gone there this time, however, but had merely
stopped briefly in the Museo Nazionale of Naples before the wall
paintings of Meleager and his Arcadian huntress companion, Ata-
lanta, which had been found in the Strada di Mercurio in that
house, and after which the latter had been named. Yet as he now
again acquired the ability to move and walked toward it, he began
to doubt whether it really bore its name after the slayer of the Cal-
edonian boar. He suddenly recalled a Greek poet, Meleager, who,
to be sure, had probably lived about a century before the de-
struction of Pompeii A descendant of his, however, might have
come here and built the house for himself. That agreed with
something else that had awakened in his memory, for he remem-
bered his supposition, or rather a definite conviction, that Gradiva
had been of Greek descent. To be sure there mingled with his
idea the figure of Atalanta as Ovid had pictured it in his "Meta-
morphoses":

"—her floating vest
"A polished buckle clasped— her careless locks
"In simple knot w r ere gathered—"

Trans, by Henry King.

He could not recall the verses word for word, but their content
was present in his mind; and from his store of knowiedge was ad-
ded the fact that Cleopatra was the name of the young wife of
Oeneus' son, Meleager. More probably this had nothing to do
with him, but with the Greek poet, Meleager. Thus, under the
glowing sun of the Campagna, there was a mythological-literary-
historical-archaeological juggling in his head.

When he had passed the house of Castor and Pollux and that
of the Centaur, he stood before the Casa di Meleagro from whose

threshold there looked up at him, still discernible, the inlaid greet-
ing "Ave." On the wall of the vestibule, Mercury was handing For-
tuna a pouch filled widi money; that probably indicated, allegor-
ically, the riches and other fortunate circumstances of the former
dweller. Behind this opened up the inner court, the center of
which was occupied by a marble table supported by three griffins.

Empty and silent, the room lay there, appearing absolutely
unfamiliar to the man, as he entered, awaking no memory that he
had already been here, yet he then recalled it, for the interior of
the house offered a deviation from that of the other excavated
buildings of the city. The peristyle adjoined the inner court on the
other side of the balcony toward the rear— not in the usual way, but
at the left side and on that account was of greater extent and more
splendid appearance than any other in Pompeii. It was framed by
a colonnade supported by two dozen pillars painted red on the
lower, and white on the upper half. These lent solemnity to die
great, silent space; here in the center was a spring with a beautifully
wrought enclosure, which served as a fish-pool. Apparendy the
house must have been the dwelling of an estimable man of culture
and artistic sense.

Norbert's gaze passed around, and he listened. Yet nowhere
about did anything stir, nor was the slightest sound audible.
Amidst this cold stone there was no longer a breath; if Gradiva
had gone into Meleager's house, she had already dissolved again
into nothing. At the rear of the peristyle was another room, an oe-
cus, die former dining-room, likewise surrounded on three sides
by pillars painted yellow, which shimmered from a distance in the
light, as if they were encrusted with gold. Between them, however,
shone a red far more dazzling than that from the walls, with which
no brush of antiquity, but young Nature of die present had painted
the ground. The former artistic pavement lay completely ruined,
fallen to decay and weather worn; it was May which exercised here
again its most ancient dominion and covered die whole oecus, as it
did at the time in many houses of the buried city, with red, flow-
ering, wild poppies, whose seeds die winds had carried thither,
and these had sprouted in the ashes. It was a wave of densely
crowded blossoms, or so it appeared although, in reality, they
stood diere motionless for Atabulus found no way down to them,
but only hummed away softly above. Yet die sun cast such flam-
ing, radiant vibrations down upon them that it gave an impression
of red ripples in a pond undulating hither and thidier. Norbert
Hanold's eyes had passed unheeding over a similar sight in other
houses, but here he was strangely thrilled by it. The dream flower
grown at the edge of Lethe filled die space, and Hypnos lay
stretched in their midst dispensing sleep, which dulls die senses,
with die saps which night has gathered in die red chalices. It seem-
ed to die man who had entered the dining-room through die por-

tico of the peristyle as if he felt his temples touched by the in-
visible slumber wand of the old vanquisher of gods and men, but
not with heavy stupor; only a dreamily sweet loveliness floated
about his consciousness. At the same time, however, he still re-
mained in control of his feet and stepped along by the wall of the
former dining-room from which gazed old pictures: Paris, award-
ing the apple; a satyr, carrying in his hand an asp and tormenting a
young Bacchante with it.

But there again suddenly, unforeseen— only about five paces
away from him— in the narrow shadow cast down by a single piece
of the upper part of the dining-room portico, which still remained
in a state of preservation, sitting on the low steps between two of
the yellow pillars was a brightly clad woman who now raised her
head. In that way she disclosed to the unnoticed arrival, whose
footstep she had apparently just heard, a full view of her face,
which produced in him a double feeling, for it appeared to him at
the same time unknown and yet also familiar, already seen or im-
agined; but by his arrested breathing and his heart palpitations, he
recognized, unmistakably, to whom it belonged. He had found
what he was looking for, what had driven him unconsciously to
Pompeii; Gradiva continued her visible existence in the noonday
spirit hour and sat here before him, as, in the dream, he had seen
her on the steps of the Temple of Apollo. Spread out on her
knees lay something white which he was unable to distinguish
clearly; it seemed to be a papyrus sheet, and a red poppy-blossom
stood out from it in marked contrast.

In her face surprise was expressed; under the lustrous, brown
hair and the beautiful, alabaster brow, two rarely bright, starlike
eyes looked at him with questioning amazement. It required only
a few moments for him to recognize the conformity of her features
with those of the profile. They must be thus, viewed from the
front, and therefore, at first glance, they had not been really un-
familiar to him. Near to, her white dress, by its slight tendency to
yellow, heightened still more the warm color; apparently it con-
sisted of a fine, extremely soft, woolen material, which produced
abundant folds, and the scarf around her head was of the same.
Below, on the nape of the neck, appeared again the shimmering,
brown hair artlessly gathered in a single knot; at her throat, under
a dainty chin, a little, gold clasp, held her gown together.

Norbert Hanold dimly perceived that involuntarily he had
raised his hand to his soft Panama hat and removed it; and now he
said in Greek,

"Are you Atalanta, the daughter of Jason, or are you a descend-
ant of die family of the poet, Meleager?"

Without giving an answer, the lady addressed looked at him
silently with a calmly wise expression in her eyes and two thoughts
passed through his mind; either her resurrected self could not

speak or she was not of Greek descent and was ignorant of the lan-
guage. He therefore substituted Latin for it and asked: "Was your
father a distinguished Pompeiian citizen of Latin origin?"

To this she was equally silent, only about her delicately curved
lips there was a slight quiver as if she were repressing a burst of
laughter. Now a feeling of fright came upon him; apparently she
was sitting there before him like a silent image, a phantom to
whom speech was denied. Consternation at this discovery was
stamped fully and distinctly upon his features.

Then, however, her lips could no longer resist the impulse; a
real smile played about them and at the same time a voice sound-
ed from between them, "If you wish to speak with me, you must
do so in German."

That was really remarkable from the mouth of a Pompeiian
woman who had died two [millennia] before, or would have been
so for a person hearing it in a different state of mind. Yet every od-
dity escaped Norbert because of two waves of emotion which had
rushed over him, one because Gradiva possessed the power of
speech, and the other was one which had been forced from his in-
most being by her voice. It sounded as clear as was her glance; not
sharp, but reminiscent of the tones of a bell, her voice passed
through the sunny silence over the blooming poppy-field, and the
young archaeologist suddenly realized that he had already heard it
thus in his imagination, and involuntarily he gave audible expres-
sion to his feeling, "I knew that your voice sounded like that."

One could read in her countenance that she was seeking com-
prehension of something, but was not finding it. To his last re-
mark she now responded, "How could you? You have never
talked with me."

To him it was not at all remarkable that she spoke German,
and, according to present usage, addressed him formally; as she
did it, he understood completely that it could not have happened
otherwise and he answered quickly, "No— not talked— but I called
to you when you lay down to sleep and stood near you then— your
face was as calmly beautiful as if it were of marble. May I beg
you— rest it again on the step in that way."

While he was speaking, something peculiar had occurred. A
golden butterfly, faintly tinged with red on the inner edge of its
upper wing, fluttered from the poppies toward the pillars, flitted a
few times about Gradiva's head and then rested on the brown,
wavy hair above her brow. At the same time, however, she rose,
slender and tall, for she stood up with deliberate haste, curtly and
silently directed at Norbert another glance, in which something
suggested that she considered him demented; then, thrusting her
foot forward, she walked out in her characteristic way along the
pillars of the old portico. Only fleetingly visible for a while, she
finally seemed to have sunk into the earth.

He stood up, breathless, as if stunned; yet with heavy under-
standing, he had grasped what had occurred before his eyes. The
noonday ghost hour was over and in the form of a butterfly, a
winged messenger had come up from the asphodel meadows of
Hades to admonish the departed one to return. For him some-
thing else was associated with this, although in confused indis-
tinctness. He knew that the beautiful butterfly of Mediterranean
countries bore the name Cleopatra, and this had also been the
name of Caledonian Meleager's young wife who, in grief over his
death, had given herself as sacrifice to those of the lower world.

From his mouth issued a call to the girl who was departing,
"Are you coming here again tomorrow in the noon hour?" Yet
she did not turn around, gave no answer, and disappeared after a
few moments in the corner of the dining-room behind the pillar.
Now a compelling impulse suddenly incited him to hasten after
her, but her bright dress was no longer visible anywhere; glowing
with the hot sun's rays, the Casa di Meleagro lay about him mo-
tionless and silent; only Cleopatra hovered on her red, shim-
mering, golden wings, making slow circles again above the multi-
tude of poppies.

When and how he had returned to the "ingresso," Norbert
Hanold could not recall; in his memory he retained only the idea
that his appetite had peremptorily demanded to be appeased,
though very tardily, at the Diomed, and then he had wandered
forth aimlessly on the first good street, had arrived at the beach
north of Castellamare where he had seated himself on a lava-
block, and the sea-wind had blown around his head until the sun
had set about half way between Monte Sant' Angelo above Sor-
rento and Monte Fpomeo on Ischia. Yet, in spite of this stay of at
least several hours by the water, he had obtained from the fresh air
there no mental relief, but was returning to the hotel in the same
condition in which he had left it. He found the other guests busily
occupied with dinner, had a little bottle of Vesuvio wine brought
to him in a corner of the room, viewed the faces of those eating,
and listened to their conversations. From the faces of all, as well as
from their talk, it appeared to him absolutely certain that in the
noon hour none of them had either met or spoken to a dead
Pompeiian woman who had returned again briefly to life. Of
course all this had been a foregone conclusion, as they had all
been at lunch at that time; why and [to what end], he himself
could not state, yet after a while he w r ent over to the competitor of
the Diomed, Hotel Suisse, sat down there also in a corner, and, as
he had to order something, likewise [with] a little bottle of Vesuvio
[before him] and here he gave himself over to the same kind of
investigations with eye and ear. They led to the same results but
also to the further conclusion that he now knew by sight all the

temporary, living visitors of Pompeii. To be sure, this effected an
increase of his knowledge which he could hardly consider an
enrichment, but from it he experienced a certain satisfying feeling
that, in the two hostelries, no guest, either male or female, was
present with whom, by means of sight and hearing, he had not
entered into a personal, even if one-sided, relation. Of course, in
no way had the absurd supposition entered his mind that he might
possibly meet Gradiva in one of the two hotels, but he could have
taken his oath that no one was staying in them who possessed, in
the remotest way, any trace of resemblance to her. During his
observations, he had occasionally poured wine from his little
bottle to his glass, and had drunk from time to time; and when, in
this manner, the former had gradually become empty, he rose and
went back to the Diomed. The heavens were now strewn with
countless, flashing, twinkling stars, but not in the traditionally sta-
tionary way, for Norbert gathered the impression that Perseus,
Cassiopeia and Andromeda with some neighbors, bowing lightly
hither and thither, were performing a singing dance, and below,
on earth, too, it seemed to him that the dark shadows of the tree-
tops and buildings did not stay in the same place. Of course on
the ground of this region— unsteady from ancient times— this could
not be exactly surprising, for the subterranean glow lurked every-
where, after an eruption, and let a little of itself rise in the vines
and grapes from which was pressed Vesuvio, which was not one of
Norbert Hanold's usual evening drinks. He still remembered,
however, even if a little of the circular movement of things might
be ascribed to the wine, too, that since noon all objects had dis-
played an inclination to whirl softly about his head, and therefore
he found, in the slight increase, nothing new, but only a con-
tinuation of the formerly existing conditions. He went up to his
room and stood for a little while at the open window, looking over
toward the Vesuvius mound, above which now no cone of smoke
spread its top, but rather something like the fluctuations of a dark,
purple cloak flowed back and forth around it. Then the young ar-
chaeologist undressed, without having lighted the light, and sought
his couch. Yet, as he stretched himself out upon it, it was not his
bed at the Diomed, but a red poppy-field whose blossoms closed
over him like a soft cushion heated by the sun. His enemy, the
common house-fly, constrained by darkness to lethargic stupidity,
sat fiftyfold above his head, on the wall, and only one, moved,
even in its sleepiness, by desire to torture, buzzed about his nose.
He recognized it, however, not as the absolute evil, the century-old
scourge of humanity, for before his eyes it poised like a red-gold
Cleopatra.

When, in the morning, the sun, with lively assistance from the
flies, awoke him, he could not recall what, besides strange, Ovid-
like metamorphoses, had occurred during the night about his bed.

Yet doubtless some mystic being, continuously weaving dream-
webs, had been sitting beside him, for he felt his head completely
overhung and filled with them, so that all ability to think lay in-
extricably imprisoned in it and only one thing remained in his
consciousness; he must again be in Meleager's house at exactly
noon. In this connection, however, a fear overcame him, for if the
gatekeepers at the "ingresso" looked at him, they would not let
him in. Anyway it was not advisable that he should expose himself
to close observation by human eyes. To escape that, there was, for
one well informed about Pompeii, a means which was, to be sure,
against the rules, but he was not in a condition to grant to legal reg-
ulation a determination of his conduct. So he climbed again, as on
the evening of his arrival, along the old city-wall, and upon it walk-
ed, in a wide semicircle, around the city of ruins to the solitary, un-
guarded Porta di Nola. Here it was not difficult to get down into
the inside and he went, without burdening his conscience very
much over the fact that by his autocratic deed he had deprived the
administration of a two-lira entrance fee, which he could, of
course, let it have later in some other way.

Thus, unseen, he had reached an uninteresting part of the city,
never before investigated by any one and still mostly unexcavated;
he sat down in a secluded, shady nook and waited, now and then
drawing his watch to observe the progress of time. Once his glance
fell upon something in the distance gleaming, silvery-white, rising
from the ashes, but with his unreliable vision, he was unable to dis-
tinguish what it was. Yet involuntarily he was impelled to go up to
it and there it stood, a tall, flowering asphodel-plant with white,
bell-like blossoms whose seeds the wind had carried thither from
outside. It was the flower of the lower world, significant and, as he
felt, destined to grow here for his purpose. He broke the slender
stem and returned with it to his seat. Hotter and hotter the May
sun burned down as on the day before, and finally approached its
noonday position; so now he started out through the long Strada
di Nola. This lay deathly still and deserted, as did almost all the
others; over there to the west all the morning visitors were already
crowding again to the Porta Marina and the soup-plates. Only the
air, suffused with heat, stirred, and in the dazzling glare the solitary
figure of Norbert Hanold with the asphodel branch appeared like
that of Hermes, Psyche's escort, in modern attire, starting out up-
on the journey to conduct a departed soul to Hades.

Not consciously, yet following an instinctive impulse, he found
his way through the Strada della Fortuna farther along to the Stra-
da di Mercurio and turning to the right arrived at the Casa di Mel-
eagro. Just as lifelessly as yesterday, the vestibule, inner court and
peristyle received him, and between the pillars of the latter the
poppies of the dining-room flamed across to him. As he entered,
however, it was not clear to him whether he had been here

yesterday or two thousand years ago to seek from the owner of the
house some information of great importance to archaeology; what
it was, however, he could not state, and besides, it seemed to him,
even though in contradiction to the above, that all the science of
antiquity was the most purposeless and indifferent thing in the
world. He could not understand how a human being could occupy
himself with it, for there was only a single tiling to which all think-
ing and investigation must be directed: what is the nature of the
physical manifestation of a being like Gradiva, dead and alive at
the same time, although the latter was true only in the noon hour
of spirits— or had been the day before, perhaps the one time in a
century or a thousand years, for it suddenly seemed certain that
his return to-day was in vain. He did not meet the girl he was look-
ing for, because she was not allowed to come again until a time
when he too would have been dead for many years, and was bur-
ied and forgotten. Of course, as he walked now along by the wall
below Paris awarding the apple, he perceived Gradiva before him,
just as on yesterday, in the same gown, sitting between the same,
two, yellow pillars on the same step. Yet he did not allow himself
to be deceived by tricks of imagination, but knew that fancy alone
was deceptively depicting before his eyes what he had really seen
there the day before. He could not refrain, however, from
stopping to indulge in the view of the shadowy apparition created
by himself and, without his knowing it, there passed from his lips
in a grieved tone the words, "Oh that you were still alive!"

His voice rang out, but after that breathless silence again reign-
ed among the ruins of the old dining-room. Yet soon another
sounded through the vacant stillness, saying, "Won't you sit down
too? You look exhausted."

Norbert Hanold's heart stood still a moment. His head, how-
ever, collected this much reason; a vision could not speak; or was
an aural hallucination practicing deception upon him? With fixed
gaze, he supported himself against the pillar.

Then again asked the voice, and it was the one which none
other than Gradiva possessed, "Are you bringing me the white
flowers?"

Dizziness rushed upon him; he felt that his feet no longer sup-
ported him, but forced him to be seated; and he slid down op-
posite her on the step, against the pillar. Her bright eyes were di-
rected toward his face, yet with a different look from the one with
which she had gazed at him yesterday when she suddenly rose and
went away. In that, something ill-humored and repellent had spok-
en; but it had disappeared, as if she had, in the mean-while, ar-
rived at a different view-point, and an expression of searching
inquisitiveness or curiosity had taken its place. Likewise, she spoke
with an easy familiarity. As he remained silent, however, to the last
question also, she again resumed, "You told me yesterday that you

had once called to me when I lay down to sleep and that you had
afterwards stood near me; my face was as white as marble. When
and where was that? I cannot remember it and I beg you to ex-
plain more exactly."

Norbert had now acquired enough power of speech to answer,
"In die night when you sat on the steps of die Temple of Apollo
in the Forum and die fall of ashes from Vesuvius covered you."

"So— then. Yes, to be sure,— diat had not occurred to me, but I
might have diought that it would be a case like that. When you
said it yesterday, I was not expecting it and I was utterly unpre-
pared. Yet that happened, if I recall correctly, two thousand years
ago. Were you living then? It seems to me you look younger."

She spoke very seriously, but at the end a faint, extremely
sweet smile played about her mouth. He hesitated in embarrass-
ment and answered, stuttering slightly, "No, I really don't believe I
was alive in die year 79— it was perhaps— yes, it surely is a psychic
condition which is called a dream that transported me into the
time of the destruction of Pompeii— but I recognized you again at
first glance."

In the expression of the girl sitting opposite him, a few feet
away, surprise was apparent and she repeated in a tone of amaze-
ment, "You recognized me again? In the dream? By what?"

"At die very first; by your manner of walking."

"Had you noticed that? And have I a special manner of walk-
ing?

Her astonishment had grown perceptibly. He replied, "Yes—
don't you realize that? A more graceful one— at least among those
now living— does not exist. Yet I recognized you immediately by
everything else too, your figure, face, bearing and drapery, for
everything agreed most minutely with die bas-relief of you in
Rome."

"All, really—" she repeated in her former tone,— "with die bas-
relief of me in Rome. Yes, I hadn't thought of that either, and at
this moment I don't know exactly— what is it— and you saw it there
then?"

Now he told her diat the sight of it had attracted him so diat he
had been highly pleased to get a plaster-cast of it in Germany and
diat for years it had hung in his room. He observed it daily and
die idea had come to him that it must represent a young Pom-
peiian girl who was walking on the stepping-stones of a street in
her native city; and die dream had confirmed it. Now he knew
also diat he had been impelled by it to travel here again to see
whether he could find some trace of her; and as he had stood
yesterday, noon at the corner of Strada di Mercurio, she, herself,
exactiy like her image had suddenly walked before him across the
stepping-stones, as if she were about to go over into die house of

Apollo. Then farther along she had recrossed die street and dis-
appeared before the house of Meleager.

To this she nodded and said, "Yes, I intended to look up the
house of Apollo, but I came here."

He continued, "On that account the Greek poet, Meleager,
came to my mind and I thought that you were one of his descend-
ants and were returning— in die hour which you are allowed— to
your ancestral home. When I spoke to you in Greek, however,
you did not understand."

"Was that Greek? No, I don't understand it or I've probably
forgotten it. Yet as you came again just now, I heard you say
something that I could understand. You expressed the wish that
some one might still be alive here. Only I did not understand
whom you meant by that."

That caused him to reply diat, at sight of her, he had believed
that it was not really she, but that his imagination was deceptively
putting her image before him in the place where he had met her
yesterday. At that she smiled and agreed, "It seems diat you have
reason to be on your guard against an excess of imagination, al-
though, when I have been with you, I never supposed so." She
stopped, however, and added, "What is there peculiar about my
way of walking, which you spoke of before?"

It was notewordiy that her aroused interest brought her back
to that, and he said, "If I may ask—"

With that he stopped, for he suddenly remembered with fear
that yesterday she had suddenly risen and gone away when he had
asked her to lie down to sleep again on that step, as on that of the
Temple of Apollo, and, associated darkly widi diis, diere came to
him the glance which she had directed upon him in departing. Yet
now die calm, friendly expression of her eyes remained and as he
spoke no furdier, she said, "It was nice that your wish that some
one might still be alive concerned me. If you wish to ask anything
of me on that account, I will gladly respond."

That overcame his fear, and he replied, "It would make me
happy to get a close view of you walking as you do in the bas-
relief."

Willingly, without answering, she stood up and walked along
between die wall and die pillars. It was die very buoyandy repose-
ful gait, with die sole raised almost perpendicularly, that was so
firmly imprinted on his mind, but for the first time he saw diat she
wore, below the raised gown, not sandals, but light, sand-colored
shoes of fine leadier. When she came back and sat down again
silently, he involuntarily started to talk of die difference in her
foot-covering from diat of die bas-relief. To that she rejoined,
"Time, of course, always changes everything, and for die present
sandals are not suitable, so I put on shoes, which are a better pro-

tection against rain and dust; but why did you ask me to walk be-
fore you? What is there peculiar about it?"

Her repeated wish to learn this proved her not entirely free
from feminine curiosity. He now explained that it was a matter of
the peculiarly upright position of the rising foot, as she walked,
and he added how for weeks he had tried to observe the gait of
modern women on the streets in his native city. Yet it seemed that
this beautiful way of walking had been completely lost to them,
with the exception, perhaps, of a single one who had given him the
impression that she walked in that way. To be sure, he had not
been able to establish this fact because of the crowd about her,
and he had probably experienced an illusion, for it had seemed to
him that her features had resembled somewhat those of Gradiva.

"What a shame," she answered. "For confirmation of the fact
would surely have been of great scientific importance, and if you
had succeeded, perhaps you would not have needed to take the
long journey here; but whom were you just speaking of? Who is
Gradiva?"

"I have named the bas-relief that, because I didn't know your
real name and don't know it yet, either."

This last he added with some hesitancy and she faltered a mo-
ment before replying to the indirect question, "My name is Zoe."

With pained tone the words escaped him: "The name suits
you beautifully, but it sounds to me like bitter mockery, for 'Zoe'
means 'life.'"

"One must adapt ... to the inevitable," she responded. "And I
have long accustomed myself to being dead; but now my time is
over for to-day; you have brought the grave -flower with you to
conduct me back. So give it to me."

As she rose and stretched forth her slender hand, he gave her
the asphodel cluster, but was careful not to touch her fingers.
Accepting the flowering branch, she said, "I thank you. To those
who are more fortunate one gives roses in spring, but for me the
flower of oblivion is the right one from your hand. To-morrow I
shall be allowed to come here again at this hour. If your way leads
you again into the house of Meleager, we can sit together at the
edge of the poppies, as we did to-day. On the threshold stands
'Ave' and I say it to you, 'Ave'!"

She went out and disappeared, as yesterday, at the turn in the
portico, as if she had there sunk into the ground. Everything lay
empty and silent again, but, from some distance, there once rang,
short and clear, a sound like the merry note of a bird flying over
the devastated city. This was stifled immediately, however. Nor-
bert, who had remained behind, looked down at the step where
she had just been sitting; there something white shimmered; it
seemed to be the papyrus leaf which Gradiva had held on her
knees yesterday and had forgotten to take with her to-day. Yet as

he shyly reached for it, he found it to be a little sketch-book with
pencil drawings of the different ruins in several houses of Pom-
peii. The page next to the last showed a drawing of the griffin-
table in the central court of the Casa di Meleagro, and on the last
was the beginning of a reproduction of the view across the poppies
of the dining-room through the row of pillars of the peristyle. That
the departed girl made drawings in a sketchbook of the present
mode was as amazing as had been the fact that she expressed her
thoughts in German. Yet those were only insignificant prodigies
beside die great one of her revivification, and apparently she used
die midday hour of freedom to preserve for herself, in dieir pre-
sent state, widi unusual artistic talent, die surroundings in which
she had once lived. The drawings testified to delicately cultivated
powers of perception, as each of her words did to a clever intel-
lect; and she had probably often sat by die old griffin-table, so diat
it was a particularly precious reminder.

Mechanically Norbert also went, with the little book, along the
portico and at the place where this turned, he noticed in die wall a
narrow cleft wide enough to afford, to an unusually slender figure,
passage into die adjoining building, and even fartiier to die Vicolo
del Fauno at the other side of die house. Suddenly, however, die
idea flashed through his mind that Zoe-Gradiva did not sink into
the ground here— that was essentially unreasonable, and he could
not understand how he had ever believed it— but went, on diis
street, back to her tomb. That must be in the Street of Tombs and
rushing forth, he hastened out into die Strada di Mercurio and as
far as the gate of Hercules; but when, breathless and reeking with
perspiration, he entered this, it was already too late. The broad
Strada di Sepolcri stretched out empty and dazzlingly white, only
at its extremity, behind the glimmering curtain of radiance, a faint
shadow seemed to dissolve uncertainly before the Villa of Dio-
mede.

Norbert Hanold passed the second half of die day widi a
feeling diat Pompeii was everywhere, or at least wherever he
stopped, veiled in a cloud of mist. It was not gray, gloomy and
melancholy as formerly, but rather cheerful and varicolored to an
extraordinary degree, blue, red and brown, chiefly a light-yellowish
white and alabaster white, interwoven widi golden threads of
sunbeams. This injured neither his power of vision, nor diat of
hearing, only, because of it, thinking was impossible, and that pro-
duced a cloud-wall whose effect rivaled the thickest mist. To die
young archaeologist it seemed almost as if hourly, in an invisible
and not otherwise noticeable way, there was brought to him a little
bottle of Vesuvio wine, which produced a continuous whirling in
his head. From diis he instinctively sought to free himself by die
use of correctives, on the one hand drinking water frequently, and

on the other hand moving ahout as much and as far as possible.
His knowledge of medicine was not comprehensive, but it helped
him to the diagnosis that this strange condition must arise from ex-
cessive congestion of blood in his head, perhaps associated with
accelerated action of the heart; for he felt the latter,— something
formerly quite unknown to him— occasionally beating fast against
his chest. Otherwise, his thoughts, which could not penetrate into
the outer world, were not in the least inactive within, or more ex-
actly, there was only one thought there, which had come into sole
possession and carried on a restless, though vain activity. It con-
tinually turned about the question of what physical nature Zoe-
Gradiva might possess, whether during her stay in the house of
Meleager she was a corporeal being or only an illusory rep-
resentation of what she had formerly been. For the former, phys-
ical, physiological and anatomical facts seemed to argue that she
had at her disposal organs of speech and could hold a pencil with
her fingers. Yet Norbert was overwhelmed with the idea that if he
should touch her, even lightly place his hand on hers, he would
then encounter only empty air. A peculiar impulse urged him to
make sure of this, but an equally great timidity hindered him from
even thinking of doing it. For he felt that the confirmation of
either of the two possibilities must bring with it something inspir-
ing fear. The corporeal existence of the hand would thrill him with
horror, and its lack of substance would cause him deep pain.

Occupied vainly with this problem, which was impossible to
solve scientifically, without experiment, he arrived, in the course of
his extensive wanderings that afternoon, at the foothills of the big
mountain group of Monte Sant' Angelo, rising south from Pom-
peii, and here he unexpectedly came upon an elderly man, already
gray-bearded, who, from his equipment with all sorts of imple-
ments, seemed to be a zoologist or botanist and appeared to be
making a search on a hot, sunny slope. He turned his head, as
Norbert came close to him, looked at the latter in surprise for a
moment and then said, "Are you interested in FaraglionenisP I
should hardly have supposed it, but it seems thoroughly probable
that they are found not only in the Faraglioni of Capri, but also
dwell permanently on the mainland. The method suggested by my
colleague, Eimer, is really good; I have already used it often with
the best of success. Please remain quite still—"

The speaker stopped, stepped carefully fonvard a few paces
and, stretched out motionless on the ground, held a little snare,
made of a long grassblade, before a narrow crevice in the rock,
from which the blue, chatoyant, little head of a lizard peeped.
Thus the man remained without the slightest movement, and
Norbert Hanold turned about noiselessly behind him and re-
turned by die w r ay he had come. It seemed to him dimly that he
had already seen the face of the lizard-hunter once, probably in

one of the two hotels; to this fact die latter's manner pointed. It
was hardly credible what foolishly remarkable purposes could
cause people to make the long trip to Pompeii; happy that he had
succeeded in so quickly ridding himself of the snare -layer, and
being again able to direct his thoughts to the problem of corporeal
reality or unreality, he started on the return. Yet a side street mis-
led him once to a wrong turn and took him, instead of to die west
boundary, to the east end of die extensive old city-wall; buried in
thought, he did not notice the mistake until he had come right up
to a building which was neither die Diomed nor the Hotel Suisse.
In spite of this it bore the sign of a hotel; nearby he recognized the
ruins of the large Pompeiian amphidieater and die memory came
to him diat, near this latter, diere was another hotel, die Albergo
del Sole, which, on account of its remoteness from die station, was
sought out by only a few guests and had remained unknown to ev-
en him. The walk had made him hot; besides, the cloudy whirling
in his head had not diminished; so he stepped in through die
open door and ordered die remedy deemed useful by him for
blood congestion, a bottle of lime-water. The room stood empty
except, of course, for the fly-visitors gathered in full numbers, and
the unoccupied host availed himself of the opportunity to recom-
mend highly his house and the excavated treasures it contained.
He pointed suggestively to die fact diat diere were, near Pompeii,
people at whose places there was not a single, genuine piece am-
ong die many objects offered for sale, but that all were imitations,
while he, satisfying himself with a smaller number, offered his
guests only things undoubtedly genuine. For he acquired no arti-
cles which he himself had not seen brought to the light of day,
and, in the course of his eloquence, he revealed that he had also
been present when they had found near die Forum die young
lovers who had clasped each other in firm embrace when they
realized dieir inevitable destruction and had thus awaited death.
Norbert had already heard of this discovery, but had shrugged his
shoulders about it as a fabulous invention of some especially
imaginative narrator, and he did so now, too, when the host
brought in to him, as authentic proof, a metal brooch encrusted
with green patina, which, in his presence, had been gathered with
the remains of die girl from the ashes. When die arrival at die Sun
Hotel took it in his own hand, however, die power of imagination
exercised such ascendency over him that suddenly, without further
critical consideration, he paid for it the price asked from English
people, and, with his acquisition, hastily left the Albergo del Sole,
in which, after anodier turn, he saw, in an open windows nodding
down, an asphodel branch covered with white blossoms, which
had been placed in a water-glass; and without needing any logical
connection, it rushed dirough his mind, at die sight of die grave-

flower, that it was an attestation of the genuineness of his new pos-
session.

This he viewed with mingled feelings of excitement and shy-
ness, keeping now to the way along the city-wall to Porta Marina.
Then it was no fairy tale that a couple of young lovers had been
excavated near the Forum in such an embrace, and there at the
Apollo temple he had seen Gradiva lie down to sleep, but only in
a dream; that he knew now quite definitely; in reality she might
have gone on still farther from the Forum, met some one and died
with him.

From the green brooch between his fingers a feeling passed
through him that it had belonged to Zoe-Gradiva, and had held
her dress closed at the throat. Then she was the beloved fiancee,
perhaps the young wife of him with whom she had wished to die.

It occurred to Norbert Hanold to hurl the brooch away. It
burned his fingers as if it had become glowing, or more exactly, it
caused him the pain such as he had felt at the idea that he might
put his hand on that of Gradiva and encounter only empty air.

Reason, nevertheless, asserted the upper hand; he did not al-
low himself to be controlled by imagination against his will. How-
ever probable it might be, there was still lacking invincible proof
that the brooch had belonged to her and that it had been she, who
had been discovered in the young man's arms. This judgment
made it possible for him to breathe freely, and when, at the dawn
of twilight, he reached the Diomed, his long wandering had
brought to his sound constitution need of physical refreshment.
Not without appetite did he devour the rather Spartan evening
meal which the Diomed, in spite of its Argive origin, had adopted,
and he then noticed two guests, newly-arrived in the course of the
afternoon. By appearance and language they marked themselves
as Germans, a man and a woman; they both had youthful, at-
tractive features endowed with intellectual expressions; their re-
lation to each other could not be determined, yet, because of a
certain resemblance, Norbert decided that they were brother and
sister. To be sure the young man's fair hair differed in color from
her light-brown tresses. In her gown she wore a red Sorrento rose,
the sight of which, as he looked across from his corner, stirred
something in his memory without his being able to think what it
was. The couple were the first people he had met on his journey
who seemed possibly congenial They talked with one another,
over a little bottle, in not too plainly audible tones, nor in cautious
whisperings, apparently sometimes about serious things and some-
times about gay tilings, for at times there passed over her face a
half-laughing expression which was very becoming to her, and
aroused the desire to participate in their conversation, or perhaps
might have awakened it in Norbert, if he had met them two days
before in the room otherwise populated only by Anglo-Ameri-

cans. Yet he felt that what was passing through his mind stood in
too strong contrast to the happy naivete of the couple about whom
there undeniably lay not the slightest cloud, for diey doubtless
were not meditating profoundly over the essential nature of a girl
who had died two thousand years ago, but, without any weariness,
were taking pleasure in an enigmatical problem of their life of the
present. His condition did not harmonize with that; on the one
hand he seemed superfluous to them, and on the other, he re-
coiled from an attempt to start an acquaintance widi them, for he
had a dark feeling that their bright, merry eyes might look through
his forehead into his thoughts and thereby assume an expression
as if they did not consider him quite in his right mind. Therefore
he went up to his room, stood, as yesterday, at die window, look-
ing over to the purple night-mantle of Vesuvius and then he lay
down to rest. Exhausted, he soon fell asleep and dreamed, but re-
markably nonsensically. Somewiiere in die sun Gradiva sat mak-
ing a trap out of a blade of grass, in order to catch a lizard, and she
said, "Please stay quite still— my colleague is right; die method is
really good and she has used it with the greatest success."

Norbert Hanold became conscious in his dream diat it was
actually the most utter madness, and he cast about to free himself
from it. He succeeded in this by the aid of an invisible bird, wiio
seemingly uttered a short, merry call, and carried die lizard away
in its beak; afterwards eveiydiing disappeared.

On awakening, he remembered that in the night a voice had
said that in the spring one gave roses, or rather this was recalled to
him through his eyes, for his gaze, passing down from die window,
came upon a bright bush of red flowers. They were of the same
kind as those which die young lady had worn in her bosom, and
when he went down, he involuntarily plucked a couple and smel-
led of them. In fact, diere must be something peculiar about Sor-
rento roses, for their fragrance seemed to him not only wonderful,
but quite new r and unfamiliar, and at the same time he felt that
they had a somewhat liberating effect upon his mind. At least they
freed him from yesterday's timidity before the gatekeepers, for he
w r ent, according to directions, in dirough die "ingresso" to Pom-
peii, paid double die amount of admission fee, and quickly struck
out upon streets which took him from the vicinity of other visitors.
The little sketch-book, from die house of Meleager, he carried
along with the green brooch and die red roses, but the fragrance of
the latter had made him forget to eat breakfast and his thoughts
were not in the present, but were directed exclusively to the noon
hour which was still far off; he had to pass the remaining interval
and for this purpose he entered now one house, now another, as a
result of which activity the idea probably occurred to him diat Gra-
diva had also walked there often before or even now sought these

places out sometimes— his supposition that she was able to do it
only at noon was tottering. Perhaps she was at liberty to do it in
other hours of the day, possibly even at night in the moonlight.
The roses strengthened this supposition strangely for him, when
he inhaled, as he held them to his nose; and his deliberations,
complaisant, and open to conviction, made advances to this new
idea, for he could bear witness that he did not cling to precon-
ceived opinions at all, but rather gave free rein to every reasonable
objection, and such there was here without any doubt, not only
logically, but desirably valid. Only the question arose whether, up-
on meeting her then, the eyes of others could see her as a cor-
poreal being, or whether only his possessed the ability to do that.
The former was not to be denied, claimed even probability for
itself, transformed the desirable thing into quite the opposite, and
transported him into a low-spirited, restless mood. The thought
that others might also speak to her, and sit down near her to carry
on a conversation with her, made him indignant; to that he alone
possessed a claim, or at any rate a privilege, for he had discovered
Gradiva, of whom no one had formerly known, had observed her
daily, taken her into his life, to a degree, imparted to her his life-
strength, and it seemed to him as if he had thereby again lent to
her life that she would not have possessed without him. Therefore
he felt that there devolved upon him a right, to which he alone
might make a claim and which he might refuse to share with any
one else.

The advancing day was hotter than the two preceding; the sun
seemed to have set her mind to-day on a quite extraordinary feat,
and made it regrettable, not only in an archaeological, but also in a
practical connection, that the water system of Pompeii had lain
burst and dried up for two thousand years. Street fountains here
and there commemorated it and likewise gave evidence of their in-
formal use by thirsty passers-by, who had, in order to bend for-
ward to the jet, leaned a hand on the marble railing and gradually
dug out a sort of trough in the place, in the same way that drop-
ping wears away stone; Norbert observed this at a corner of the
Strada della Fortuna, and from that the idea occurred to him that
the hand of Zoe-Gradiva, too, might formerly have rested here in
that way, and involuntarily, he laid his hand into the little hollow,
yet he immediately rejected the idea, and felt annoyance at himself
that he could have done it; the thought did not harmonize at all
with the nature and bearing of the young Pompeiian girl of a re-
fined family; there was something profane in the idea that she
could have bent over so and placed her lips on the yery pipe from
which the plebeians drank with coarse mouths. In a noble sense,
he had never seen anything more seemly than her actions and
movements; he was frightened by the idea that she might be able
to see by looking at him that he had had the incredibly unreason-

able thought, for her eyes possessed something penetrating; a cou-
ple of times, when he had been with her, the feeling had seized
him that she looked as if she were seeking for access to his inmost
thoughts and were looking about them as if with a bright steel
probe. He was obliged, therefore, to take great care that she might
come upon nothing foolish in his mental processes.

It was now an hour until noon and in order to pass it, he went
diagonally across the street into die Casa del Fauno, die most ex-
tensive and magnificent of all die excavated houses. Like no odier,
it possessed a double inner court and showed, in the larger one,
on the middle of the ground, die empty base on which had stood
the famous statue of the dancing faun after which the house had
been named. Yet there stirred in Norbert Hanold not die least
regret that this work of art, valued highly by science, was no longer
here, but, together with the mosaic picture of die Battle of Alex-
ander, had been transferred to the Museo Nazionale in Naples; he
possessed no further intention nor desire than to let time move
along, and he wandered about aimlessly in this place through the
large building. Behind the peristyle opened a wider room, sur-
rounded by numerous pillars, planned either as another repetition
of the peristyle or as an ornamental garden; so it seemed at pre-
sent for, like the dining-room of the Casa di Meleagro, it was com-
pletely covered with poppy-blooms. Absent-mindedly the visitor
passed through die silent dereliction.

Then, however, he stopped and rested on one foot; but he
found himself not alone here; at some distance his glance fell up-
on two figures, who first gave the impression of only one, because
they stood as closely as possible to each other. They did not see
him, for they were concerned only with themselves, and, in that
corner, because of die pillars, might have believed diemselves
undiscoverable by any other eyes. Mutually embracing each odier,
they held dieir lips also pressed togedier and the unsuspected
spectator recognized, to his amazement, that they were the young
man and woman who had last evening seemed to him die first
congenial people encountered on this trip. For brodier and sister,
their present position, the embrace and die kiss, it seemed to him,
had lasted too long. So it was surely anodier pair of lovers, prob-
ably a young bridal couple, an Augustus and Gretchen, too.

Strange to relate, however, the two latter did not, at die mo-
ment, enter Norbert's mind, and die incident seemed to him not
at all ridiculous nor repulsive, radier it heightened his pleasure in
them. What they were doing seemed to him as natural as it did
comprehensible; his eyes clung to the living picture, more widely
open than diey ever had been to any of die most admired works
of art, and he would have gladly devoted himself for a longer time
to his observation. Yet it seemed to him that he had wrongfully
penetrated into a consecrated place and was on the point of dis-

turbing a secret act of devotion; the idea of being noticed there
struck terror to his heart and he quickly turned, went back some
distance noiselessly on tiptoe and, when he had passed beyond
hearing distance, ran out with bated breath and beating heart to
the Vicolo del Fauno.

When he arrived before the house of Meleager, he did not
know whether it was already noon, and did not happen to ques-
tion his watch about it, but remained before the door, standing
looking down with indecision for some time at the "Ave" in the
entrance. A fear prevented him from stepping in, and strangely, he
was equally afraid of not meeting Gradiva within, and of finding
her there; for, during the last few moments, he had felt quite sure
that, in the first case, she would be staying somewhere else with
some younger man, and, in the second case, the latter would be in
company with her on the steps between the pillars. Toward the
man, however, he felt a hate far stronger than against all the as-
sembled common house-flies; until to-day he had not considered
it possible that he could be capable of such violent inner ex-
citement. The duel, which he had always considered stupid non-
sense, suddenly appeared to him in a different light; here it
became a natural right which the man injured in his own rights, or
mortally insulted, made use of as the only available means to se-
cure satisfaction or to part with an existence which had become
purposeless. So he suddenly stepped forward to enter; he would
challenge the bold man and would— this rushed upon him almost
more powerfully— express unreservedly to her that he had con-
sidered her something better, more noble, and incapable of such
vulgarity.

He was so filled to the brim with this rebellious idea that he
uttered it, even though there was not apparently the least occasion
for it, for, when he had covered the distance to the dining-room
with stormy haste, he demanded violently, "Are you alone?" al-
though appearances allowed of no doubt that Gradiva was sitting
there on the steps, just as much alone as on the two previous days.

She looked at him amazed and replied, "Who should still be
here after noon? Then the people are all hungry and sit down to
meals. Nature has arranged that very happily for me."

His surging excitement could not, however, be allayed so
quickly and without his knowiedge or desire, he let slip, with the
conviction of certainty, the conjecture which had come over him
outside; for he added, to be sure somewiiat foolishly, that he could
really not think otherwise.

Her bright eyes remained fixed upon his face until he had fin-
ished. Then she made a motion with one finger against her brow
and said, "You—" After that, however, she continued, "It seems to
me quite enough that I do not remain away from here, even

though I must expect that you are coining here at this time; but the
place pleases me and I see that you have brought me my sketch-
book that I forgot here yesterday. I thank you for your vigilance.
Won't you give it to me?"

The last question was well founded for he showed no disposi-
tion to do so, but remained motionless. It began to dawn upon
him that he had imagined and worked out a monstrous piece of
nonsense, and had also given expression to it; in order to com-
pensate, as far as possible, he now stepped forward hastily, handed
Gradiva the book, and at the same time sat down near her on the
step, mechanically. Casting a glance at his hand, she said, "You
seem to be a lover of roses."

At these words he suddenly became conscious of what had
caused him to pluck and bring them and he responded, "Yes,— of
course, not for myself, have I— you spoke yesterday— and last night,
too, some one said it to me— people give them in spring."

She pondered briefly, before she answered, "Ah, so— yes, I re-
member. To others, I meant, one does not give asphodel, but ros-
es. That is polite of you; it seems your opinion of me is im-
proved."

Her hand stretched out to receive the red flowers and, hand-
ing them to her, he rejoined, "I believed at first that you could be
here only during the noon hour, but it has become probable to
me that you also, at some other time— that makes me very happy-"

"Why does it make you happy?"

Her face expressed lack of comprehension— only about her
lips there passed a slight, hardly noticeable quiver. Confused he
offered, "It is beautiful to be alive; it has never seemed so much so
to me before— I wished to ask you?" He searched in his breast
pocket and added, as he drew out the object, "Has this brooch
ever belonged to you?"

She leaned forward a little toward it, but shook her head, "No,
I can't remember. Chronologically it would, of course, not be im-
possible, for it probably did not exist until this year. Did you find
it in the sun perhaps? The beautiful, green patina surely seems fa-
miliar to me, as if I had already seen it."

Involuntarily he repeated, "In the sun?— why in the sun?"

"'Sole' it is called here. It brings to light many tilings of that
sort. Was the brooch said to have belonged to a young girl who is
said to have perished, I believe, in the vicinity of the Forum, with a
companion?"

"Yes, who held his arm about her—"

"All, so-"

The two little words apparently lay upon Gradiva's tongue as a
favorite interjection and she stopped after it for a moment, before
she added, "Did you think that on that account I might have worn

it? and would that have made you a little— how did you say it be-
fore ?— unhappy ? "

It was apparent that he felt extraordinarily relieved and it was
audible in his answer, "I am very happy about it— for the idea that
the brooch belonged to you made me— dizzy."

"You seem to have a tendency for that. Did you perhaps forget
to eat breakfast this morning? That easily aggravates such attacks; I
do not suffer from them, but I make provisions, as it suits me best
to be here at noon. If I can help you out of your unfortunate con-
dition a little by sharing my lunch with you—"

She drew out of her pocket a piece of white bread wrapped in
tissue paper, broke it, put half into his hand and began to devour
the other with apparent appetite. Thereby her exceptionally dainty
and perfect teeth not only gleamed between her lips with pearly
glitter, but in biting the crust caused also a crunching sound so that
they gave the impression of being not unreal phantoms, but of
actual, substantial reality. Besides, with her conjecture about the
postponed breakfast, she had, to be sure, hit upon the right thing;
mechanically he, too, ate and felt from it a decidedly favorable ef-
fect on the clearing of his thoughts. So, for a little while, die cou-
ple did not speak further, but devoted themselves silently to die
same practical occupation until Gradiva said, "It seems to me as if
we had already eaten our bread thus together once two thousand
years ago. Can't you remember it?"

He could not, but it seemed strange to him now that she spoke
of so infinitely remote a past, for die strengthening of his mind by
die nourishment had brought with it a change in his brain. The
idea that she had been going around here in Pompeii such a long
time ago would no longer harmonize with sound reason; every-
thing about her seemed of die present, as if it could be scarcely
more dian twenty years old. The form and color of her face, die
especially charming, brown, wavy hair, and the flawless teeth; also,
the idea that the bright dress, marred by no shadow of a spot, had
lain countless years in the pumice ashes contained something in
the highest degree inconsistent. Norbert was seized by a feeling of
doubt whether he were really sitting here awake or were not more
probably dreaming in his study, where, in contemplation of the
likeness of Gradiva, he had been overcome by sleep, and had
dreamed diat he had gone to Pompeii, had met her as a person
still living and was dreaming furdier that he was still sitting so at
her side in the Casa di Meleagro. For, diat she was really still alive
or had been living again could only have happened in a dream-
die laws of nature raised an objection to it—

To be sure, it was strange that she had just said that she had
once shared her bread with him in diat way two thousand years
ago. Of diat he knew nothing and even in the dream could find
nothing about it.

Her left hand lay with the slender fingers calmly on her knees.
They bore the key to the solution of an inscrutable riddle-
Even in the dining room of the Casa di Meleagro, the bold-
ness of the common house-fly was not deterred; on the yellow pil-
lar opposite him he saw one running up and down in a worthless
way in greedy quest; now it whizzed right past his nose.

He, however, had to make some answer to her question, if he
did not remember the bread that he had formerly consumed with
her and he said suddenly, "Were the flies then as devilish as now,
so that they tormented you to death?"

She glanced at him with utterly [u]ncomprehending aston-
ishment and repeated, "The flies? Have you flies on your mind
now?

Then suddenly the black monster sat upon her hand, which
did not reveal by the slightest quiver that she noticed it. There-
upon, however, there united in the young archaeologist two pow-
erful impulses to execute the same deed. His hand went up sud-
denly and clapped with no gentle stroke on the fly and the hand of
his neighbor.

With this blow there came to him, for die first time, sense,
consternation and also a joyous fear. He had delivered the stroke
not dirough empty air, but on an undoubtedly real, living and
warm, human hand which, for a moment apparently absolutely
starded, remained motionless under his. Yet then she drew it away
with a jerk, and the mouth above it said, "You are surely appar-
ently crazy, Norbert Hanold."

The name, which he had disclosed to no one in Pompeii,
passed so easily, assuredly and clearly from her lips that its owner
jumped up from die steps, even more terrified. At the same time
there sounded in the colonnade footsteps of people who had
come near unobserved; before his confused eyes appeared the
faces of the congenial pair of lovers from die Casa del Fauno, and
the young lady cried, with a tone of greatest surprise, "Zoe! You
here, too? and also on your honeymoon? You have not written
me a word about it, you know."

Norbert was again outside before Meleager's house in the
Strada di Mercurio. How he had come diere was not clear to him,
it must have happened instinctively, and, caused by a lightning-like
illumination in him, was die only thing that he could do not to
present a dioroughly ridiculous figure to the young couple, even
more to die girl greeted so pleasandy by diem, who had just ad-
dressed him by his Christian and family names, and most of all to
himself. For even if he grasped nothing, one fact was indisputable.
Gradiva, with a warm, human hand, not unsubstantial, but pos-
sessing corporeal reality, had expressed an indubitable trudi; his
mind had, in the last two days, been in a condition of absolute

madness; and not at all in a silly dream, but rather witii the use of
eyes and ears such as is given by nature to man for reasonable ser-
vice. Like everything else, how such a thing had happened es-
caped his understanding, and only darkly did he feel that there
must have also been in the game a sixth sense which, obtaining the
upper hand in some way, had transformed something perhaps
precious to the opposite. In order to get at least a little more light
on the matter by an attempt at meditation, a remote place in soli-
tary silence was absolutely required; at first, however, he was im-
pelled to withdraw as quickly as possible from die sphere of eyes,
ears and other senses, which use dieir natural functions as suits
their own purpose.

As for the owner of that warm hand, she had, at any rate, from
her first expression, been surprised by the unforeseen and un-
expected visit at noon in die Casa di Meleagro in a not entirely
pleasant manner. Yet, of this, in die next instant, there was no
trace to be seen in her bright countenance; she stood up quickly,
stepped toward the young lady and said, extending her hand, "It
certainly is pleasant, Gisa; chance sometimes has a clever idea too.
So this is your husband of two weeks? I am glad to see him, and,
from die appearance of bodi of you, I apparently need not change
my congratulations for condolence. Couples to whom diat would
be applied are at this time usually sitting at lunch in Pompeii; you
are probably staying near the 'ingresso'; I shall look you up there
this afternoon. No, I have not written you anything; you won't be
offended at me for diat, for you see my hand, unlike yours, is not
adorned by a ring. The atmosphere here has an extremely power-
ful effect on the imagination, which I can see in you; it is better, of
course, dian if it made one too matter of fact. The young man who
just went out is laboring also under a remarkable delusion; it
seems to me that he believes a fly is buzzing in his head; well,
every one has, of course, some kind of bee in his bonnet. As is my
duty, I have some knowledge of entomology and can, therefore,
be of a little sendee in such cases. My father and I live in the
'Sole'; he, too, had a sudden and pleasing idea of bringing me
here with him if I would be responsible for my own entertain-
ment, and make no demands upon him. I said to myself that I
should certainly dig up something interesting alone here. Of
course I had not reckoned at all on the find which I made— I mean
the good fortune of meeting you, Gisa; but I am talking away the
time, as is usually die case witii an old friend— My fadier comes in
out of the sun at two o'clock to eat at die 'Sole'; so I have to keep
company there with his appetite and, therefore, I am sorry to say,
must, for the moment forego your society. You will, of course, be
able to view the Casa di Meleagro without me; diat I think likely,
though I can't understand it, of course. Favorisca, signor! Arrive-
derci, Gisetta! That much Italian I have already learned and one

really does not need more. Whatever else is necessary one can
invent— please, no, senza compliment!!"

This last entreaty of the speaker concerned a polite movement
by which the young husband had seemed to wish to escort her.
She had expressed herself most vividly, naturally and in a manner
quite fitting to the circumstances of the unexpected meeting of a
close friend, yet with extraordinary celerity, which testified to the
urgency of the declaration that she could not at present remain
longer. So not more than a few minutes had passed since the hasty
exit of Norbert Hanold, when she also stepped from the house of
Meleager into the Strada di Mercurio. This lay, because of the
hour, enlivened only here and there by a cringing lizard, and for a
few moments the girl, hesitating, apparendy gave herself over to a
brief meditation. Then she quickly struck out in the shortest way
to the gate of Hercules, at the intersection of the Vicolo di Mer-
curio and die Strada di Sallustio, crossed die stepping-stones with
the gracefully buoyant Gradiva-walk, and tiius arrived very quickly
at die two ruins of the side wall near the Porta Ercolanese. Behind
this there stretched at some length the Street of Tombs, yet not
dazzlingly white, nor overhung with glittering sunbeams, as twenty-
four hours ago, when die young archaeologist had tiius gazed
down over it widi searching eyes. To-day die sun seemed to be
overcome by a feeling that she had done a little too much good in
the morning; she held a gray veil drawn before her, die con-
densation of which was visibly being increased, and, as a result, the
cypresses, which grew here and diere in die Strada di Sepolcri,
rose unusually sharp and black against the heavens. It was a
picture different from diat of yesterday; die brilliance which mys-
teriously glittered over everything was lacking; the street also as-
sumed a certain gloomy distinctness and had at present a dead
aspect which honored its name. This impression was not dimin-
ished by an isolated movement at its end, but was radier height-
ened by it; there, in the vicinity of the Villa of Diomede, a
phantom seemed to be looking for its grave, and disappeared und-
er one of the monuments.

It was not the shortest way from die house of Meleager to the
Albergo del Sole, rather the exactly opposite direction, but Zoe-
Gradiva must have also decided that time was not yet importuning
so violently to lunch, for after a quite brief stop at die Hercules
gate, she walked farther along die lava-blocks of die Street of
Tombs, every time raising the sole of her lingering foot almost
perpendicularly.

The Villa of Diomede— named tiius, for people of the present,
after a monument which a certain freed-man, Marcus Arrius Dio-
medes, formerly promoted to die directorship of diis city-section,
had erected nearby for his lady, Arria, as well as for himself and

his relatives— was a very extensive building and concealed within it-
self a part of the history of the destruction of Pompeii not invent-
ed by imagination. A confusion of extensive ruins formed the up-
per part; below lay an unusually large sunken garden surrounded
by a well preserved portico of pillars with scanty remnants of a
fountain and a small temple in the middle; and farther along two
stairways led down to a circular cellar-vault, lighted only dimly by
gloomy twilight. The ashes of Vesuvius had penetrated into this
also and the skeletons of eighteen women and children had been
found here; seeking protection they had fled, with some hastily
gathered provisions, into the half-subterranean space and the de-
ceptive refuge had become the tomb of all. In another place the
supposed, nameless master of the house lay, also stretched out
choked on the ground; he had wished to escape through the
locked garden-door, for he held the key to it in his fingers. Beside
him cowered another skeleton, probably that of a servant, who was
carrying a considerable number of gold and silver coins. The bod-
ies of the unfortunates had been preserved by the hardened ashes;
in the museum at Naples there is under glass, the exact impression
of the neck, shoulders and beautiful bosom of a young girl clad in
a fine, gauzy garment.

The Villa of Diomede had, at one time, at least, been the in-
evitable goal of every dutiful Pompeii visitor, but now, at noon, in
its rather roomy solitude, certainly no curiosity lingered in it, and
therefore it had seemed to Norbert Hanold the place of refuge
best suited to his newest mental needs. These longed most insist-
ently for grave-like loneliness, breathless silence, and quiescent
peace; against the latter, however, an impelling restlessness in his
system raised counter-claims, and he had been obliged to force an
agreement between the two demands, such that the mind tried to
claim its own and yet gave the feet liberty to follow their impulse.
So he had been wandering around through the portico since his
entrance; he succeeded thus in preserving his bodily equilibrium,
and he busied himself with changing his mental state into the same
normal condition; that, however, seemed more difficult in execu-
tion than in intention; of course it seemed to his judgment unques-
tionable that he had been utterly foolish and irrational to believe
that he had sat with a young Pompeiian girl, who had become
more or less corporeally alive again, and this clear view of his mad-
ness formed incontestably an essential advance on the return to
sound reason; but it was not yet restored entirely to normal con-
dition, for, even if it had occurred to him that Gradiva was only a
dead bas-relief, it was also equally beyond doubt that she was still
alive. For that irrefutable proof was adduced; not he alone, but
others also, saw her, knew that her name was Zoe and spoke with
her, as with a being as much alive, in substance, as they. On the
other hand, however, she knew his name too, and again, that

could originate only from a supernatural power; this dual nature
remained enigmatic even for the rays of understanding that were
entering his mind. Yet to this incompatible duality there was
joined a similar one in him, for he cherished the earnest desire to
have been destroyed here in the Villa of Diomede two thousand
years ago, in order that he might not run the risk of meeting Zoe-
Gradiva again anywhere; at the same time, however, an extra-
ordinarily joyous feeling was stirring within him, because he was
still alive and was therefore able to meet her again somewhere. To
use a commonplace yet fitting simile, this was turning in his head
like a mill-wheel, and through the long portico he ran around like-
wise without stopping, which did not aid him in the explanation of
the contradictions. On the contrary, he was moved by an indefi-
nite feeling that everything was growing darker and darker about
and within him.

Then he suddenly recoiled, as he turned one of the four cor-
ners of the colonnade. A half dozen paces away from him there
sat, rather high up on a fragmentary wall-ruin, one of the young
girls who had found death here in the ashes.

No, that was nonsense, which his reason rejected. His eyes,
too, and a nameless something else recognized that fact. It was
Gradiva; she was sitting on a stone ruin as she had formerly sat on
the step, only, as the former was considerably higher, her slender
feet, which hung down free in the sand-color shoes, were visible
up to her dainty ankles.

With an instinctive movement, Norbert was at first about to
run out between the pillars through the garden; what, for a half
hour, he had feared most of anything in the world had suddenly
appeared, viewed him with bright eyes and with lips which, he felt,
were about to burst into mocking laughter; yet they didn't, but the
familiar voice rang out calmly from them, "You'll get wet outside."

Now, for the first time, he saw that it was raining; for that rea-
son it had become so dark. That unquestionably was an advan-
tage to all the plants about and in Pompeii, but that a human being
in the place would be benefited by it was ridiculous, and for the
moment Norbert Hanold feared, far more than danger of death,
appearing ridiculous. Therefore he involuntarily gave up the at-
tempt to get away, stood there, helpless, and looked at the two
feet, which now, as if somewhat impatient, were swinging back and
forth; and as this view did not have so clearing an effect upon his
thoughts that he could find expression for them, the owner of the
dainty feet again took up the conversation. "We were interrupted
before; you were just going to tell me something about flies— I im-
agined that you were making scientific investigations here— or
about a fly in your head. Did you succeed in catching and destroy-
ing the one on my hand?"

This last she said with a smiling expression about her lips,
which, however, was so faint and charming, that it was not at all
terrifying. On the contrary, it now lent to the questioned man pow-
er of speech, but with this limitation, that the young archaeologist
suddenly did not know how to address her. In order to escape this
dilemma, he found it best to avoid that and replied, "I was— as they
say— somewhat confused mentally and ask pardon that I— the
hand— in that way— how I could be so stupid, I can't understand-
but I can't understand either how its owner could use my name in
upbraiding me for my— my madness."

Gradiva's feet stopped moving and she rejoined, still address-
ing him familiarly, "Your power of understanding has not yet pro-
gressed that far, Norbert Hanold. Of course, I can not be surpris-
ed, for you have long ago accustomed me to it. To make that dis-
covery again I should not have needed to come to Pompeii, and
you could have confirmed it for me a good hundred miles near-
er.

"A hundred miles nearer"— he repeated, perplexed and half
stuttering— "where is that?"

"Diagonally across from your house, in the corner house; in
my window, in a cage, is a canary."

Like a memory from far away this last word moved the hearer,
who repeated, "A canary"— and he added, stuttering more— "He-
he sings?"

"They usually do, especially in spring when the sun begins to
seem warm again. In tiiat house lives my fatiier, Richard Bertgang,
professor of zoology."

Norbert Hanold's eyes opened to a width never before attain-
ed by them, and then he said, "Bertgang— then are you— are you—
Miss Zoe Bertgang? But she looked quite different—"

The two dangling feet began again to swing a little, and Miss
Zoe Bertgang said in reply, "If you find that form of address more
suitable between us, I can use it too, you know, but the other came
to me more naturally. I don't know whether I looked different
when we used to run about before with each other as friends every
day, and occasionally beat and cuffed each other, for a change, but
if, in recent years, you had favored me with even one glance, you
might perhaps have seen that I have looked like this for a long
time. —No, now, as they say, it's pouring pitchforks; you won't
have a dry stitch."

Not only had the feet of the speaker indicated a return of im-
patience, or whatever it might be, but also in the tones of her voice
there appeared a little didactic, ill-humored curtness, and Norbert
had thereby been overwhelmed by a feeling that he was running
the risk of slipping into the role of a big school-boy scolded and
slapped in the face. That caused him to again seek mechanically
for an exit between the pillars, and to the movement which show-

ed this impulse Miss Zoe's last utterance, indifferently added, had
reference; and, of course, in an undeniably striking way, because
for what was now occurring outside of the shelter, "pouring" was
really a mild term. A tropical cloudburst such as only seldom took
pity on the summer thirst of die meadows of the Campagna, was
shooting vertically and rushing as if the Tyrrhenian Sea were pour-
ing from heaven upon the Villa of Diomede, and yet it continued
like a firm wall composed of billions of drops gleaming like pearls
and large as nuts. That, indeed, made escape out into the open air
impossible, and forced Norbert Hanold to remain in the school-
room of the portico while the young school-mistress with the
delicate, clever face made use of the hindrance for further ex-
tension of her pedagogical discussion by continuing, after a brief
pause:—

"Then up to the time when people call us 'Backfisch," for
some unknown reason, I had really acquired a remarkable attach-
ment for you and thought that I could never find a more pleasing
friend in die world. Mother, sister, or brother I had not, you
know; to my faiher a slow-worm in alcohol was far more interest-
ing than I, and people (I count girls such) must surely have some-
thing with which they can occupy their thoughts and the like. Then
you were that something, but when archaeology overcame you, I
made die discovery diat you— excuse die familiarity, but your new
formality sounds absurd to me— I was saying diat I imagined that
you had become an intolerable person, who had no longer, at least
for me, an eye in his head, a tongue in his mouth, nor any of die
memories that I retained of our childhood friendship. So I
probably looked different from what I did formerly for when,
occasionally, I met you at a party, even last winter, you did not
look at me and I did not hear your voice; in this, of course, diere
was nothing which marked me out especially, for you treated all
the others in the same way. To you I was but air, and you, with
your shock of light hair, which I had formerly pulled so often,
were as boresome, dry and tongue-tied as a stuffed cockatoo and
at die same time as grandiose as an— archaeopteryx; I believe the
excavated, antediluvian bird-monster is so called; but diat your
head harbored an imagination so magnificent as here in Pompeii
to consider me something excavated and restored to life— I had
not surmised diat of you, and when you suddenly stood before me
unexpectedly, it cost me some effort at first to understand what
kind of incredible fancy your imagination had invented. Then I
was amused and, in spite of its madness, it was not entirely dis-
pleasing to me. For, as I said, I had not expected it of you."

With diat, her expression and tone somewhat mollified at the
end, Miss Zoe Bertgang finished her unreserved, detailed and in-
structive lecture and it was indeed notable how exactly she then re-
sembled the figure of Gradiva on the bas-relief, not only in her

features, her form, her eyes, expressive of wisdom, and her charm-
ingly wavy hair, but also in her graceful manner of walking which
he had often seen; her drapery, too, dress and scarf of a cream-
colored, fine cashmere material which fell in soft, voluminous
folds, completed the extraordinary resemblance of her whole ap-
pearance. There might have been much foolishness in the belief
that a young Pompeiian girl, destroyed two thousand years ago by
Vesuvius, could sometimes walk around alive again, speak, draw
and eat bread, but even if the belief brought happiness, it assumed
everywhere, in the bargain, a considerable amount of incompre-
hensibility; and in consideration of all the circumstances, there was
incontestably present, in the judgment of Norbert Hanold, some
mitigating ground for his madness in for two days considering Gra-
diva a resurrection.

Although he stood there dry under the portico roof, there was
established, not quite ineptly, a comparison between him and a
wet poodle, who has had a bucketful of water thrown on his head;
but the cold shower-bath had really done him good. Without
knowing exactly why, he felt that he was breathing much more
easily. In that, of course, the change of tone at the end of the ser-
mon—for the speaker sat as if in a pulpit-chair— might have helped
especially; at least thereat a transfigured light appeared in his eyes,
such as awakened hope for salvation through faith produces in the
eyes of an ardently affected church-attendant; and as the rebuke
was now over, and there seemed no necessity for fearing a further
continuation, he succeeded in saying, "Yes, now I recognize— no,
you have not changed at all— it is you, Zoe— my good, happy, clever
comrade— it is most strange—"

"That a person must die to become alive again; but for ar-
chaeologists that is of course necessary."

"No, I mean your name—"

"Why is it strange?"

The young archaeologist showed himself familiar with not only
the classical languages, but also with the etymology of German,
and continued, "Because Bertgang has the same meaning as Gra-
diva and signifies 'the one splendid in walking'."

Miss Zoe Bertgang's two sandal-like shoes were, for the mo-
ment, because of their movement, reminiscent of an impatiently
see-sawing wagtail waiting for something; yet the possessor of the
feet which walked so magnificently seemed not at present to be
paying any attention to philological explanations; by her coun-
tenance she gave the impression of being occupied with some
hasty plan, but was restrained from it by an exclamation of Nor-
bert Hanold' s which audibly emanated from deepest conviction,
"What luck, though, that you are not Gradiva, but are like the
congenial young ladyl"

That caused an expression as of interested surprise to pass
over her face and she asked, "Who is that? Whom do you
mean?"

"The one who spoke to you in Meleager's house."

"Do you know her?"

"Yes, I had already seen her. She was die first person who
seemed especially congenial to me."

"So? Where did you see her?"

"This morning, in the House of die Faun. There die couple
were doing something very strange."

"What were they doing?"

"They did not see me and they kissed each other."

"That was really very reasonable, you know. Why else are they
in Pompeii on dieir wedding trip?"

At one blow widi die last word die former picture changed be-
fore Norbert Hanold's eyes, for die old wall-ruin lay diere empty,
because the girl, who had chosen it as a seat, teacher's chair and
pulpit, had come down, or really flown, and with die same supple
buoyancy as that of a wagtail swinging through the air, so diat she
already stood again on Gradiva-feet, before his glance had con-
sciously caught up widi her descent; and continuing her speech
directly, she said, "Well, die rain has stopped; too severe rulers do
not reign long. That is reasonable, too, you know, and thus every-
thing has again become reasonable. I, not least of all, and you can
look up Gisa Hartleben, or whatever new name she has, to be of
scientific assistance to her about the purpose of her stay in Pom-
peii. I must now go to the Albergo del Sole, for my father is prob-
ably waiting for me already at lunch. Perhaps we shall meet again
sometime at a party in Germany or on die moon. Addio!"

Zoe Bertgang said this in the absolutely polite, but also equally
indifferent tone of a most well-bred young lady, and, as was her
custom, placing her left foot forward, raised die sole of the right
almost perpendicularly to pass out. As she lifted her dress slightly
with her left hand, because of the thoroughly wet ground outside,
die resemblance to Gradiva was perfect and the man, standing
hardly more dian two arm-lengths away, noticed for die first time a
quite insignificant deviation in the living picture from the stone
one. The latter lacked somediing possessed by the former, which
appeared at the moment quite clear, a little dimple in her cheek,
which produced a slight, indefinable effect. It puckered and
wrinkled a little and could therefore express annoyance or a sup-
pressed impulse to laugh, possibly both togedier. Norbert Hanold
looked at it and aldiough from the evidence just presented to him
he had completely regained his reason, his eyes had to again sub-
mit to an optical illusion. For, in a tone triumphing peculiarly over
his discovery, he cried out, "There is the fly again!"

It sounded so strange that from die ^comprehending listener,
who could not see herself, escaped the question, "The fly-
where?"

"There on your cheek!" and immediately the man, as he
answered, suddenly twined an arm about her neck and snapped,
this time with his lips, at the insect so deeply abhorrent to him,
which vision juggled before his eyes deceptively in the little dim-
ple. Apparendy, however, without success, for right afterwards he
cried again, "No, now it's on your lips!" and thereupon, quick as a
flash, he directed thither his attempt to capture, now remaining so
long that no doubt could survive that he succeeded in completely
accomplishing his purpose, and strange to relate die living Gradiva
did not hinder him at all, and when her moudi, after about a
minute, was forced to struggle for breadi, restored to powers of
speech, she did not say, "You are really crazy, Norbert Hanold,"
but rather allowed a most charming smile to play more visibly dian
before about her red lips; she had been convinced more dian ever
of the complete recovery of his reason.

The Villa of Diomede had two thousand years ago seen and
heard horrible things in an evil hour, yet at die present it heard
and saw, for about an hour, only things not at all suited to inspire
horror. Then, however, a sensible idea became uppermost in Miss
Zoe Bertgang's mind and as a result, she said, against her wishes,
"Now, I must really go, or my poor fadier will starve. It seems to
me you can to-day forego Gisa Hartleben's company at noon, for
you have nodiing more to learn from her and ought to be content
with us in the Sun Hotel."

From diis it was to be concluded that during diat hour some-
thing must have been discussed, for it indicated a helpful desire to
instruct, which die young lady vented on Norbert. Yet, from the
reminding words, he did not gadier diis, but something which, for
the first time, he was becoming terribly conscious of; diis was ap-
parent in die repetition, "Your father— what will he—?"

Miss Zoe, however, interrupted, without any sign of awakened
anxiety, "Probably he will do nothing; I am not an indispensable
piece in his zoological collection; if I were, my heart would prob-
ably not have clung to you so unwisely. Besides, from my early
years, I have been sure that a woman is of use in the world only
when she relieves a man of die trouble of deciding household mat-
ters; I generally do this for my fadier and therefore you can also
be radier at ease about your future. Should he, however, by
chance, in this case, have an opinion different from mine, we will
make it as simple as possible. You go over to Capri for a couple of
days; there, with a grass snare— you can practise making them on
my litde finger— catch a lizard Faraglionensis. Let it go here again,
and catch it before his eyes. Then give him free choice between it
and me, and you will have me so surely that I am sorry for you.

Toward his colleague, Eimer, however, I feel to-day drat I have
formerly been ungrateful, for without his genial invention of lizard-
catching I should probably not have come into Meleager's house,
and that would have been a shame, not only for you, but for me
too.

This last view she expressed outside of the Villa of Diomede
and, alas, there was no person present on earth who could make
any statements about the voice and manner of talking of Gradiva.
Yet even if drey had resembled tiiose of Zoe Bertgang, as every-
thing else about her did, they must have possessed a quite un-
usually beautiful and roguish charm.

By this, at least, Norbert Hanold was so strongly overwhelmed
that, exalted to poetic flights, he cried out, "Zoe, you dear life and
lovely present— we shall take our wedding-trip to Italy and Pom-
pen.

That was a decided proof of how different circumstances can
also produce a transformation in a human being and at tire same
time unite with it a weakening of tire memory. For it did not occur
to him at all drat he would thereby expose himself and his com-
panion on the journey to the danger of receiving, from mis-
anthropic, ill-humored railway-companions, the names Augustus
and Gretchen, but at tire moment he was thinking so little about it
that they walked along hand in hand through tire old Street of
Tombs in Pompeii. Of course this, too, did not stamp itself into
their minds at present as such, for a cloudless sky shone and
laughed again above it; die sun stretched out a golden carpet on
the old lava-blocks; Vesuvius spread its misty pine-cone; and the
whole excavated city seemed overwhelmed, not with pumice and
ashes, but with pearls and diamonds, by tire beneficent rain-storm.

The brilliance in the eyes of the young daughter of die zo-
ologist rivaled diese, but to die announced desire about the
destination of their journey by her childhood friend who had, in a
way, also been excavated from die ashes, her wise lips responded:
"I think we won't worry about tiiat to-day; diat is a tiling which
may better be left by both of us to more and maturer considera-
tion and future promptings. I, at least, do not yet feel quite alive
enough now for such geographical decisions."

That showed that the speaker possessed great modesty about
the quality of her insight into tilings about which she had never
thought until to-day. They had arrived again at the Hercules gate
where, at the beginning of the Strada Consolare, old stepping-
stones crossed die street. Norbert Hanold stopped before them
and said with a peculiar tone, "Please go ahead here." A merry,
comprehending, laughing expression lurked around his compan-
ion's mouth, and, raising her dress slightly with her left hand, Gra-

diva rediviva Zoe Bertgang, viewed by him with dreamily observ-
ing eyes, crossed with her calmly buoyant walk, through the sun-
light, over the stepping-stones, to the other side of the street.

PART II

DELUSION AND DREAM

IN

WILHELM JENSEN'S GRADIVA

BY

DR. SIGMUND FREUD

DELUSION AND DREAM

I

IN a circle of men who take it for granted that the basic riddle
of the dream has been solved by the efforts of the present writer, 2
curiosity was aroused one day concerning those dreams which
have never been dreamed, those created by authors, and at-
tributed to fictitious characters in their productions. The proposal
to submit this kind of dream to investigation might appear idle and
strange; but from one view-point it could be considered justifiable.
It is, to be sure, not at all generally believed that the dreamer
dreams something senseful and significant. Science and the ma-
jority of educated people smile when one offers them the task of
interpreting dreams. Only people still clinging to superstition, who
give continuity, thereby, to the convictions of the ancients, will not
refrain from interpreting dreams, and the writer of "Traum-
deutung" has dared, against the protests of orthodox science, to
take sides with the ancients and superstitious. He is, of course, far
from accepting in dreams a prevision of the future, for the dis-
closure of which man has, from time immemorial, striven vainly.
He could not, however, completely reject the connections of
dreams with the future, for, after completing some arduous anal-
ysis, the dreams seemed to him to represent the fulfilment of a
wish of the dreamer; and who could dispute that wishes are pre-
ponderantly concerned with the future?

I have just said that the dream is a fulfilled wish. Whoever is
not afraid to toil through a difficult book, whoever does not de-
mand that a complicated problem be insincerely and untruthfully
presented to him as easy and simple, to save his own effort, may
seek in the above-mentioned "Traumdeutung" ample proof of this
statement, and may, until then, cast aside the objection that will
surely be expressed against the equivalence of dreams and wish-
fulfilment.

We have, however, anticipated. The question is not now one
of establishing whether the meaning of a dream is, in every case, to
be interpreted as the fulfilment of a wish, or, just as frequently, as
an anxious expectation, an intention or deliberation, etc. The first
question is, rather, whether the dream has any meaning at all,
whether one should grant it the value of a psychic process. Science
answers, No; it explains the dream as a purely physiological pro-
cess, behind which one need not seek meaning, significance nor
intention. Physical excitations play, during sleep, on the psychic
instrument and bring into consciousness sometimes some, some-
times other ideas devoid of psychic coherence. Dreams are com-
parable only to convulsions, not to expressive movements.

In this dispute over the estimation of dreams, writers seem to
stand on the same side with the ancients, superstitious people and
the author of "Traumdeutung." For, when they cause the people
created by their imagination to dream, they follow the common
experience that people's thoughts and feelings continue into sleep,
and they seek only to depict the psychic states of their heroes
through the dreams of the latter. Storytellers are valuable allies,
and their testimony is to be rated high, for they usually know many
things between heaven and earth that our academic wisdom does
not even dream of. In psychic knowledge, indeed, they are far
ahead of us, ordinary people, because they draw from sources tiiat
we have not yet made accessible for science. Would tiiat this
partizanship of literary workers for the senseful nature of dreams
were only more unequivocal! Sharper criticism might object tiiat
writers take sides neither for nor against the psychic significance of
an isolated dream; they are satisfied to show how the sleeping
psyche stirs under the stimuli which have remained active in it as
off-shoots of waking life.

Our interest for the way in which story-tellers make use of
dreams is not, however, made less intense by this disillusionment.
Even if the investigation should teach nothing of the nature of
dreams, it may perhaps afford us, from this angle, a little insight
into the nature of creative, literary production. Actual dreams are
considered to be unrestrained and irregular formations, and now
come the free copies of such dreams; but there is much less
freedom and arbitrariness in psychic life than we are inclined to
believe, perhaps none at all. What we, laity, call chance resolves
itself, to an acknowledged degree, into laws; also, what we call
arbitrariness in psychic life rests on laws only now dimly surmised.
Let us see!

There are two possible methods for this investigation; one is
engrossment with a special case, with the dream-creations of one
writer in one of his works; the other consists in bringing together
and comparing all the examples of the use of dreams which are
found in the works of different story-tellers. The second way
seems to be by far the more effective, perhaps the only justifiable
one, for it frees us immediately from the dangers connected with
the conception of "the writer" as an artistic unity. This unity falls
to pieces in investigations of widely different writers, among whom
we are wont to honor some, individually, as the most profound
connoisseurs of psychic life. Yet these pages will be filled by an
investigation of the former kind. It so happened, in the group of
men who started the idea, that some one remembered that the bit
of fiction which he had most recently enjoyed contained several
dreams which looked at him with familiar expression and invited
him to try on them the method of "Traumdeutung." He admitted
tiiat the material and setting of the little tale had been partly

responsible for the origin of his pleasure, for the story was unfold-
ed in Pompeii, and concerned a young archaeologist who had giv-
en up interest in life, for that in die remains of die classic past, and
now, by a remarkable, but absolutely correct detour, was brought
back to life. During die perusal of this really poetic material, die
reader experienced all sorts of feelings of familiarity and con-
currence. The tale was Wilhelm Jensen's "Gradiva," a little ro-
mance designated by its audior, himself, "A Pompeian Fancy."

In order diat my furdier references may be to familiar ma-
terial, I must now ask my readers to lay aside this pamphlet, and
replace it for some time with "Gradiva," which first appealed in
the book-world in 1903. To diose who have already read "Gra-
diva," I will recall the content of die story in a short epitome, and
hope that their memory will of itself restore all die charm of which
the story is thereby stripped.

A young archaeologist, Norbert Hanold, has discovered at
Rome, in a collection of antiques, a bas-relief which attracts him so
exceptionally that he is delighted to be able to get an excellent
plaster-cast of it which he can hang up in his study in a German
university-city, and study with interest. The relief represents a ma-
ture, young girl walking. She has gathered up her voluminous
gown slightly, so that her sandaled feet become visible. One foot
rests wholly on the ground; die odier is raised to follow and
touches die ground only with the tips of die toes while sole and
heel rise almost perpendicularly. The unusual and especially
charming walk represented had probably aroused die artist's atten-
tion and now, after so many centuries, captivates die eye of our ar-
chaeological observer.

This interest of the hero in the described bas-relief is die basic
psychological fact of our story. It is not immediately explicable.
"Doctor Norbert Hanold, docent of archaeology, really found in
the relief nothing notewordiy for his science." "He could not
explain what quality in it had aroused his attention; he knew only
that he had been attracted by something and this effect of die first
view had remained unchanged since then," but his imagination
does not cease to be occupied with the relief. He finds in it a
"sense of present time" as if die artist had fixed the picture on the
street "from life." He confers upon die girl represented walking a
name, Gradiva, "the girl splendid in walking," spins a yarn that she
is the daughter of a distinguished family, perhaps of a "patrician
aedile, whose office was connected with the worship of Ceres,"
and is on the way to die temple of die goddess. Then it is repul-
sive to him to place her in the mob of a metropolis, rather he
convinces himself that she is to be transported to Pompeii and is
walking there somewhere on die peculiar stepping-stones which
have been excavated; these made a dry crossing possible in rainy
weadier, and yet also afforded passage for chariot-wheels. The cut

of her features seems to him Greek, her Hellenic ancestry unques-
tionable. All of his science of antiquity gradually puts itself at the
service of this or other fancies connected with the relief.

Then, however, there obtrudes itself upon him a would-be
scientific problem which demands solution. Now it is a matter of
his passing a critical judgment "whether the artist had reproduced
Gradiva's manner of walking from life." He cannot produce it in
himself; in the search for the "real existence" of this gait, he arrives
only at "observation from life for the purpose of enlightenment on
the matter". This forces him, to be sure, to a mode of action ut-
terly foreign to him. "Women had formerly been for him only a
conception in marble or bronze, and he had never given his femi-
nine contemporaries the least consideration." Society life has
always seemed to him an unavoidable torture; young ladies whom
he meets, in such connections, he fails to see and hear, to such a
degree that, on the next encounter, he passes without greeting,
which, of course, serves to place him in an unfavorable light with
them. Now, however, the scientific task which he has imposed
upon himself forces him in dry weather, but especially in wet
weather, to observe diligently the feet of ladies and girls on the
street, an activity which yields him many a displeased, and many
an encouraging glance from those observed. "Yet one was as in-
comprehensible to him as the other." As a result of these careful
studies, he finds that Gradiva's gait can not be proved to exist real-
ly, a fact which fills him with regret and annoyance.

Soon afterwards he has a terribly frightful dream, which
transports him to old Pompeii on the day of the eruption of Vesu-
vius, and makes him an eye-witness of the destruction of the city.
"As he stood thus at the edge of the Forum near the Jupiter
temple, he suddenly saw Gradiva a short distance in front of him.
Until then no thought of her presence there had moved him, but
now suddenly it seemed natural to him, as she was, of course, a
Pompeiian girl living in her native city and, without his having any
suspicion of it was his contemporary. " [Italics added by Freud]
Fear about her impending fate draws from him a cry of warning, in
answer to which the unperturbed apparition turns her face toward
him. Unconcerned, she continues her way to the portico of the
temple, sits down there on a step and slowly rests her head upon
it, while her face keeps growing paler, as if it were turning to white
marble. As he hastens after her, he finds her, with calm
countenance, stretched out, as if sleeping, on the broad step; soon
the rain of ashes buries her form.

When he awakes, he thinks he is still hearing the confused
cries of the Pompeiians, who are seeking safety, and the dully re-
sounding boom of the turbulent sea; but even after his returning
senses have recognized these noises as the waking expressions of
life in the noisy metropolis, he retains for some time the belief in

die reality of what he has dreamed; when he has finally rid himself
of die idea diat he was really present, nearly two thousand years
ago, at die destruction of Pompeii, there yet remains to him, as a
firm conviction, die idea diat Gradiva lived in Pompeii and was
buried there in the year 79. His fancies about Gradiva, due to the
after-effects of this dream, continue so that he now, for die first
time, begins to mourn her as lost.

While he leans from his window, prepossessed widi diese
ideas, a canary, warbling his song in a cage at an open window of
the house opposite, attracts his attention. Suddenly something like
a dirill passes through the man not yet completely awakened from
his dream. He believes that he sees, in die street, a figure like that
of his Gradiva, and even recognizes die gait characteristic of her;
without deliberation he hastens to the street to overtake her, and
the laughter and jeers of die people, at his unconventional morn-
ing attire, first drive him quickly back home. In his room, it is
again the singing canary in the cage who occupies him and stimu-
lates him to a comparison with himself. He, too, is sitting in a cage,
he finds, yet it is easier for him to leave his cage. As if from added
after-effect of the dream, perhaps also under die influence of the
mild spring air, he decides to take a spring trip to Italy, for which a
scientific motive is soon found, even if "die impulse for travel had
originated in a nameless feeling."

We will stop a moment at this most loosely motivated journey
and take a closer look at the personality, as well as the activities of
our hero. He seems to us still incomprehensible and foolish; we
have no idea of how his special folly is to acquire enough human
appeal to compel our interest. It is the privilege of the author of
"Gradiva" to leave us in such a quandary; with his beauty of
diction and his judicious selection of incident, he presently re-
wards our confidence and die undeserved sympadiy which we still
grant to his hero. Of die latter we learn diat he is already destined
by family tradition to be an [archaeologist], has later, in isolation
and independence, submerged himself completely in his science,
and has withdrawn entirely from life and its pleasures. Marble and
bronze are, for his feelings, the only things really alive and expres-
sing the purpose and value of human life. Yet, perhaps with kind
intent, Nature has put into his blood a dioroughly unscientific sort
of corrective, a most lively imagination, which can impress itself
not only on his dreams, but also on his waking life. By such sepa-
ration of imagination and intellectual capacity, he is destined to be
a poet or a neurotic, and he belongs to diat race of beings whose
realm is not of diis world. So it happens that his interest is fixed
upon a bas-relief which represents a girl walking in an unusual
manner, that he spins a web of fancies about it, invents a name
and an ancestry for it, and transports die person created by him in-
to Pompeii, which was buried more than eighteen hundred years

ago. Finally, after a remarkable anxiety-dream he intensifies the
fancy of the existence and destruction of the girl named Gradiva
into a delusion which comes to influence his acts. These perform-
ances of imagination would appear to us strange and inscrutable, if
we should encounter them in a really living person. As our hero,
Norbert Hanold, is a creature of an author, we should like to ask
the latter timidly if his fancy has been determined by any power
other than his own arbitrariness.

We left our hero just as he is apparently being moved by the
song of a canary to take a trip to Italy, the motive for which is ap-
parently not clear to him. We learn, further, that neither destina-
tion nor purpose are firmly established in his mind. An inner rest-
lessness and dissatisfaction drive him from Rome to Naples and
farther on from there; he encounters the swarm of honeymoon
travelers and, forced to notice the tender "Augustuses" and "Gret-
chens," is utterly unable to understand the acts and impulses of
the couples. He arrives at the conclusion that, of all the follies of
humanity, "marriage, at any rate, took the prize as the greatest and
most incomprehensible one, and the senseless wedding trips to
Italy somehow capped the climax of this buffoonery." At Rome,
disturbed in his sleep by the proximity of a loving couple, he flees,
forthwith, to Naples, only to find there another "Augustus" and
"Gretchen." As he believes that he understands from their con-
versation that the majority of those bird-couples does not intend to
nest in the rubbish of Pompeii, but to take flight to Capri, he
decides to do what they do not do, and finds himself in Pompeii
"contrary to expectations and intentions" a few days after the be-
ginning of his journey,— without, however, finding there the peace
which he seeks.

The role which, until then, has been played by the honey-
moon couples, who made him uneasy and vexed his senses, is
now assumed by house-flies, in which he is inclined to see the
incarnation of absolute evil and worthlessness. The two torment-
ors blend into one; many fly-couples remind him of honeymoon
travelers, address each other probably, in their language, also as
"My only Augustus" and "My sweet Gretchen."

Finally he cannot help admitting "that his dissatisfaction was
certainly caused not by his surroundings alone, but to a degree
found its origin in him." He feels that he is out of sorts because he
lacks something without being able to explain what.

The next morning, he goes through the "ingresso" to Pompeii
and after taking leave of the guide, roams aimlessly through the ci-
ty, notably, however, without remembering that he has been pre-
sent in a dream some time before at the destruction of Pompeii.
Therefore in the "hot, holy" hour of noon, which the ancients,
you know, considered the ghost-hour, when the other visitors have
taken flight and the heap of ruins, desolate and steeped in sun-

light, lies before him, there stirs in him the ability to transport
himself back into the buried life, but not with the aid of science.
"What it taught was a lifeless, archaeological view and what came
from its mouth was a dead, philological language. These helped in
no way to a comprehension with soul, mind and heart, as the say-
ing is, but he, who possessed a desire for that, had to stand alone
here, the only living person in the hot noonday silence, among the
remains of the past, in order not to see with physical eyes nor hear
with corporeal ears. Then— the dead awoke, and Pompeii began to
live again." While thus, by means of his imagination, he endows
the past with life, he suddenly sees, indubitably, the Gradiva of his
bas-relief step out of a house and buoyantly cross the lava
stepping-stones, just as he had seen her in the dream that night
when she had lain down to sleep on the steps of the Apollo tem-
ple. "With this memory he became conscious, for the first time, of
something else; he had, without himself knowing the motive in his
heart, come to Italy on that account and had, without stop, contin-
ued from Rome and Naples to Pompeii to see if he could here
find trace of her— and that in a literal sense, —for, with her unusual
gait, she must have left behind in the ashes a foot-print different
from all the others."

The suspense, in which the author of "Gradiva" has kept us up
to this point, mounts here, for a moment, to painful confusion.
Not only because our hero has apparently lost his equilibrium, but
also because, confronted with the appearance of Gradiva, who was
formerly a plaster-cast and then a creation of imagination, we are
lost. Is it a hallucination of our deluded hero, a "real" ghost, or a
corporeal person? Not that we need to believe in ghosts to draw
up this list. Jensen, who named his tale a "Fancy" has, of course,
found no occasion, as yet, to explain to us whether he wishes to
leave us in our world, decried as dull and ruled by the laws of sci-
ence, or to conduct us into another fantastic one, in which reality
is ascribed to ghosts and spirits. As "Hamlet" and "Macbeth"
show, w r e are ready to follow r him into such a place without hesi-
tation. The delusion of the imaginative archaeologist would need,
in that case, to be measured by another standard. Yes, when we
consider how improbable must be the real existence of a person
who faithfully reproduces in her appearance that antique bas-
relief, our list shrinks to an alternative: hallucination or ghost of
the noon hour. A slight touch in the description eliminates the for-
mer possibility. A large lizard lies stretched out, motionless, in the
sunlight; it flees, however, before the approaching foot of Gradiva
and wriggles away over the lava pavement. So, no hallucination;
something outside of the mind of our dreamer. But ought the
reality of a rediviva to be able to disturb a lizard?

Before the house of Meleager Gradiva disappears. We are not
surprised that Norbert Hanold persists in his delusion that Pom-

peii has begun to live again about him in the noon hour of spirits,
and that Gradiva has also returned to life and gone into the house
where she lived before the fateful August day of the year 79.
There dart through his mind keen conjectures about the person-
ality of the owner, after whom the house may have been named,
and about Gradiva' s relation to the latter; these show that his sci-
ence has now given itself over completely to the sendee of his
imagination. After entering this house, he again suddenly discovers
the apparition, sitting on low steps between two yellow pillars.
"Spread out on her knees lay something white which he was un-
able to distinguish clearly; it seemed to be a papyrus sheet.—" Tak-
ing for granted his most recent suppositions about her ancestry, he
speaks to her in Greek, awaiting timorously the determination of
whether the power of speech may, perhaps, be granted to her in
her phantom existence. As she does not answer, he changes the
greeting to Latin. Then, from smiling lips, come the words '"If you
wish to speak with me, you must do so in German.'"

What embarrassment for us, the readers! Thus the author of
"Gradiva" has made sport of us and decoyed us, as if by means of
the refulgence of Pompeiian sunshine, into a little delusion so that
we may be milder in our judgment of the poor man, whom the
real noonday sun actually burns; but we know now, after recover-
ing from brief confusion, that Gradiva is a living German girl, a
fact which we wish to reject as utterly improbable. Reflecting
calmly, we now await a discovery of what connection exists be-
tween the girl and the stone representation of her, and of how our
young archaeologist acquired the fancies which hint at her real
personality.

Our hero is not freed so quickly as we from the delusion, for,
"Even if the belief brought happiness," says our author, "it as-
sumed everywhere, in the bargain, a considerable amount of in-
comprehensibility." Besides, this delusion probably has subjective
roots of which we know nothing, which do not exist for us. He
doubtless needs trenchant treatment to bring him back to reality.
For the present he can do nothing but adapt the delusion to the
wonderful discovery which he has just made. Gradiva, who had
perished at the destruction of Pompeii, can be nothing but a ghost
of the noon hour, who returns to life for the noon hour of spirits;
but why, after the answer given in German, does the exclamation
escape him: '"I knew that your voice sounded like that'"? Not only
we, but the girl, too, must ask, and Hanold must admit that he has
never heard her voice before, but expected to hear it in the dream,
when he called to her, as she lay down to sleep on the steps of the
temple. He begs her to repeat that action, but she then rises,
directs a strange glance at him, and, after a few steps, disappears
between the pillars of the court. A beautiful butterfly had, shortly
before that, fluttered about her a few times; in his interpretation it

had been a messenger from Hades, who was to admonish the de-
parted one to return, as the noon hour of spirits had passed. The
call, '"Are you coming here again to-morrow in the noon hour?'"
Hanold can send after the disappearing girl. To us, however, who
venture a more sober interpretation, it will seem that tire young
lady found something improper in tire request which Hanold had
made of her, and therefore, insulted, left him, as she could yet
know nothing of his dream. May not her delicacy of feeling have
realized the erotic nature of tire request, which was prompted, for
Hanold, only by the connection with his dream?

After the disappearance of Gradiva, our hero examines all tire
guests at the Hotel Diomed table and soon also those of Hotel
Suisse, and can then assure himself that in neither of the only two
lodgings known to him in Pompeii is a person to be found, who
possesses the most remote resemblance to Gradiva. Of course, he
had rejected, as unreasonable, tire supposition that he might really
meet Gradiva in one of the two hostelries. The wine pressed on
the hot soil of Vesuvius then helps to increase the day's dizziness.

The only certainty about the next day is that Norbert must
again be in Meleager's house at noon; and, awaiting tire hour, he
enters Pompeii over tire old city-wall, a way which is against tire
rules. An asphodel cluster of white bell-flowers seems, as flower of
tire lower world, significant enough for him to pluck and carry
away. All his knowledge of antiquity appears to him, however,
while he is waiting, as the most purposeless and indifferent matter
in the world, for another interest has acquired control of him, the
problem, "what is tire nature of the physical manifestation of a be-
ing like Gradiva, dead and alive at the same time, although the
latter was true only in the noon hour of spirits?" He is also
worried lest to-day he may not meet tire lady sought, because per-
haps she may not be allowed to return for a long time, and when
he again sees her between the pillars, he considers her appearance
an illusion, which draws from him tire grieved exclamation, '"Oh,
that you were still alive!'" This time, however, he has evidently
been too critical, for tire apparition possesses a voice which asks
him whether he wishes to bring her tire white flower, and draws
the man, who has again lost his composure, into a long conversa-
tion. Our author informs us, readers, to whom Gradiva has al-
ready become interesting as a living personality, that the ill-
humored, and repellent glance of the day before has given way to
an expression of searching inquisitiveness or curiosity. She really
sounds him, demands, in explanation of his remark of tire pre-
ceding day, when he had stood near her as she lay down to sleep,
in this way learns of tire dream in which she perished with her na-
tive city, then of the bas-relief, and of the position of the foot,
which attracted tire young archaeologist. Now she shows herself
ready to demonstrate her manner of walking, whereby the substi-

tution of light, sand-colored, fine-leather shoes for die sandals,
which she explains as adaptation to the present, is established as
the only deviation from the original relief of Gradiva. Apparently
she is entering into his delusion, whose whole range she elicits
from him, without once opposing him. Only once she seems to
have been wrested from her role by a peculiar feeling when, his
mind on the bas-relief, he asserts tiiat he has recognized her at first
glance. As, at this stage of die conversation, she, as yet, knows no-
thing of the relief, she must be on the point of misunderstanding
Hanolds words, but she has immediately recovered herself again
and only to us will many of her speeches appear to have a double
meaning, besides their significance in connection with the de-
lusion, a real, present meaning, as, for example, when she regrets
that he did not succeed in confirming the Gradiva-gait on the
street. '"What a shame; perhaps you would not have needed to
take die long journey here.'" She learns also tiiat he has named
the bas-relief of her "Gradiva," and tells him tiiat her real name is
Zoe!

'"The name suits you beautifully, but it sounds to me like
bitter mockery, for "Zoe" means "life."'"

'"One must adapt ... to die inevitable,'" she responds. "'And
I have long accustomed myself to being dead.'"

Witii die promise to be at the same place again on the mor-
row, she takes leave of him, after she has obtained die asphodel
cluster. '"To diose who are more fortunate one gives roses in
spring, but for me the flower of oblivion is die right one from your
hand.'" Melancholy is suited to one so long dead, who has now
returned to life for a few short hours.

We begin now to understand and to hope. If the young lady,
in wiiose form Gradiva is again revived, accepts Hanold's delusion
so completely, she does it probably to free him from it. No odier
course is open; by opposition, one w r ould destroy that possibility.
Even die serious treatment of a real condition of this kind could
proceed no differendy dian to place itself first on the ground story
of the delusion-structure, and investigate it then as dioroughly as
possible. If Zoe is die right person, we shall soon learn how one
cures delusions like those of our hero. We should also like to
know r how r such a delusion originates. It would be very striking,
and yet not widiout example and parallel, if the treatment and in-
vestigation of die delusion should coincide and, while it is being
analyzed, result in the explanation of its origin. We have a sus-
picion, of course, that our case might then turn out to be an
"ordinary" love story, but one may not scorn love as a healing
power for delusions; and was not our hero's captivation by die
Gradiva-relief also a complete infatuation, directed, to be sure, at
the past and lifeless?

After Gradiva's disappearance, there is heard once more a
distant sound like the merry note of a bird flying over the city of
ruins. The man who has remained behind picks up something
white, which Gradiva has left, not a papyrus leaf, but a sketch-
book with pencil drawings of Pompeii. We should say that the fact
that she has forgotten the little book, in this place, is a pledge of
her return, for we assert that one forgets nothing without a secret
reason or a hidden motive.

The remainder of the day brings to our hero all sorts of re-
markable discoveries and facts, which he neglects to fit together.
In the wall of die portico where Gradiva disappeared, he notices
to-day a narrow cleft, which is, however, wide enough to afford
passage to an unusually slender figure. He recognizes the fact that
Zoe-Gradiva does not need to sink into the ground here, an idea
which is so senseless tiiat he is now ashamed of the discarded be-
lief, but tiiat she uses this route to go back to her tomb. A faint
shadow seems to him to dissolve at the end of the Street of
Tombs, before the so-called Villa of Diomede. Dizzy, as on the
previous day, and occupied with the same problem, he wanders
now about Pompeii, wondering of what physical nature Zoe-
Gradiva may be and whether one might feel anything if one
touched her hand. A peculiar impulse urges him to undertake this
experiment and yet an equally great timidity in connection with the
idea restrains him. On a hot, sunny slope he meets an older man
who, from his equipment, must be a zoologist or a botanist, and
seems to be busy catching things. The latter turns to him and says,
'"Are you interested in FaraglionensisP I should hardly have sup-
posed it, but it seems thoroughly probable that they are found not
only in the Faraglioni of Capri, but also dwell permanently on the
mainland. The method suggested by my colleague, Eimer, is really
good; I have already used it often with the best of success. Please
remain quite still,'"— The speaker stops talking then, and holds a
little snare, made of a long grassblade, before a narrow crevice,
from which the blue, chatoyant, little head of a lizard peeps.
Hanold leaves the lizard-hunter with the critical thought that it is
hardly credible what foolishly remarkable purposes can cause
people to make the long trip to Pompeii, in which criticism he
does not, of course, include himself and his intention of seeking
footprints of Gradiva in the ashes of Pompeii. The gentleman's
face, moreover, seems familiar to him, as if he has noticed it
casually in one of the two hotels; the man's manner of addressing
him has also sounded as if directed at an acquaintance. As he con-
tinues his wandering, a side street leads him to a house not pre-
viously discovered by him; this proves to be the Albergo del Sole.
The hotel-keeper, who is not busy avails himself of the oppor-
tunity to recommend highly his house and the excavated treasures
in it. He asserts tiiat he was present when there were found near

the Forum the young lovers who, on realizing their inevitable de-
struction, had clasped each other in firm embrace and thus await-
ed death. Hanold has already heard of diat before and shrugged
his shoulders over it, as a fabulous invention of some especially
imaginative narrator, but to-day the words of the hotel-keeper
awaken in him credulity, which soon stretches itself more when
the former brings forth a metal brooch encrusted with green pat-
ina, which, in his presence, was gathered, with the remains of the
girl, from the ashes. He secures this brooch, widiout further crit-
ical consideration, and when, as he is leaving the hotel, he sees in
an open window, nodding down, a cluster of white asphodel blos-
soms, die sight of the grave -flower tlirills him as an attestation of
the genuineness of his new possession.

Widi this brooch, however, a new delusion takes possession of
him or, radier, die old one continues for a while, apparendy not a
good omen for die treatment which has been started. Not far from
the Forum, a couple of young lovers were excavated in an em-
brace, and in the dream he saw Gradiva lie down to sleep in that
very neighborhood, at the Apollo temple. Was it not possible, that
in reality she went still farther from the Forum to meet there some
one with whom she then died?

A tormenting feeling, which we can perhaps compare to jeal-
ousy, originates from this supposition. He appeases it by referring
to the uncertainty of the combination, and so far regains his senses
as to be able to have his evening meal in Hotel Diomed. His atten-
tion is attracted by two, newly-arrived guests, a man and a woman,
whom, because of a certain resemblance, he considers brodier
and sister— in spite of die difference in die color of their hair. They
are die first people whom he has encountered on this trip who
seem possibly congenial. A red Sorrento rose, which the young
girl wears, awakes in him some memory— he can not recall what.
Finally he goes to bed and dreams; it is remarkable nonsense, but
apparendy concocted of the day's experiences. "Somewhere in the
sun Gradiva sat making a trap out of a blade of grass, in order to
catch a lizard and she said, 'Please stay quite still— my colleague is
right; die method is really good, and she has used it with greatest
success!'" He resists the dream, even in his sleep, with die crit-
icism diat it is, of course, utter madness, and he succeeds in getting
rid of it with the aid of an invisible bird, who utters a short, merry
call and carries the lizard away in his beak.

In spite of all this ghostly visitation, he awakes rather cleared
and settled mentally. A rosebush, which bears flowers of die kind
that he noticed yesterday on die young lady, recalls to him that in
die night, some one said diat in the spring one gave roses. He
plucks some of die roses, involuntarily, and there must be some
association with these which has a liberating effect upon his mind.
Rid of his aversion to human beings, he takes the customary road

to Pompeii, laden with die roses, the brooch and die sketch-book,
and occupied by die different problems relating to Gradiva. The
old delusion has become full of flaws; he already doubts if she is
permitted to stay in Pompeii in die noon hour only, and not at
odier times. Emphasis, on that account, is transferred to die object
recently acquired, and the jealousy connected with it torments him
in all sorts of disguises. He might almost wish diat die apparition
should remain visible to only his eyes and escape die notice of
odiers; in that way, he might consider her his exclusive property.
During his ramble awaiting die noon hour, he has a surprising en-
counter. In die Casa del Fauno he happens upon two people who
doubtless believe themselves undiscoverable in a nook, for they
are embracing each other and dieir lips meet. Widi amazement he
recognizes in diem the congenial couple of yesterday evening; but
for brodier and sister dieir present position, the embrace and the
kiss are of too long duration. So it is a couple of lovers, probably a
young bridal-couple, another Augustus and Gretchen. Strange to
relate, the sight of tiiis now arouses in him nothing but pleasure,
and fearful, as if he had disturbed a secret act of devotion, he
withdraws unobserved. A deference which has long been lacking
in him has been restored.

Arriving at Meleager's house, he is afraid diat he may find
Gradiva in the company of anodier man, and becomes so excited
about it that he can find no odier greeting for her than die ques-
tion: '"Are you alone?'" With difficulty she makes him realize that
he has picked die roses for her; he confesses to her die latest de-
lusion, that she is die girl who was found in die Forum in her
lover's embrace and to whom the green brooch had belonged.
Not without mockery, she inquires if he found the piece in the
sun. The latter— here called "Sole"— brings to light many tilings of
that sort. As cure for the dizziness, which he admits, she proposes
to him to share a lunch widi her and offers him half of a piece of
white bread wrapped in tissue paper; the other half of this she
consumes with apparent appetite. Thereat her faultless teeth
gleam between her lips and, in biting the crust, cause a slight
crunching sound. To her remark, '"It seems to me as if we had al-
ready eaten our bread thus together once two thousand years ago.
Can't you remember it?'" he cannot answer, but die strengthening
of his mind by the nourishment, and all die evidences of present
time in her do not fail to have effect on him. Reason stirs in him
and makes him doubt the whole delusion that Gradiva is only a
noonday Ghost; on die odier hand, there is the objection that she,
herself, has just said that she had already shared her repast with
him two thousand years ago. As a means of settling this conflict
there occurs to him an experiment which he executes with slyness
and restored courage. Her left hand, with its slender fingers, is
resting on her knees, and one of die house-flies, about whose

boldness and worthlessness he formerly became so indignant,
alights on this hand. Suddenly Hanold's hand rises and claps, with
no gende stroke, on the fly and on Gradiva's hand. This bold ex-
periment affords him twofold success, first die joyous conviction
diat he actually touched a really living, warm hand, then, however,
a reprimand, before which he starts up in terror from his seat on
the step. For from Gradiva's lips come die words, after she has re-
covered from her amazement, '"You are surely apparendy crazy,
Norbert Hanold.'"

Calling a person by name is recognized as the best method of
awakening him, when he is sleeping, or of awakening a somnam-
bulist. Unfortunately we are not permitted to observe the results,
for Norbert Hanold, of Gradiva's calling his name, which he had
told to no one in Pompeii. For at this critical moment, die con-
genial lovers appear from the Casa del Fauno and die young lady
calls, in a tone of pleasant surprise, '"Zoe! You here, too? and also
on your honeymoon? You have not written me a word about it,
you know!'" Before this new proof of the living reality of Gradiva,
Hanold flees.

Zoe-Gradiva, too, is not most pleasantly surprised by die un-
expected visit which disturbs her, it seems, in an important piece
of work. Soon composed, she answers die question with a glib
speech, in which she informs her friend, and especially us, about
die situation; and thereby she knows how to get rid of the young
couple. She extends her compliments, but she is not on her
wedding-trip. '"The young man who just went out is laboring also
under a remarkable delusion; it seems to me that he believes a fly
is buzzing in his head; well, every one has, of course, some kind of
bee in his bonnet. As is my duty, I have some knowledge of ento-
mology and can, therefore, be of a little sendee in such cases. My
father and I live in die "Sole"; he, too, had a sudden and pleasing
idea of bringing me here widi him if I would be responsible for
my own entertainment and make no demands upon him. I said to
myself that I should certainly dig up something interesting alone
here. Of course I had not reckoned at all on the find which I
made— I mean the good fortune of meeting you, Gisa.'" Zoe now
feels obliged to leave at once, to be company for her father at the
"Sole." So she goes, after she has introduced herself to us as the
daughter of die zoologist and lizard-catcher, and has admitted in
ambiguous words her therapeutic intentions and other secret ones.
The direction which she takes is not that of the Sun Hotel, in
which her fadier is awaiting her, but it seems to her, too, that in
die region of the Villa of Diomede a shadowy form is seeking its
burial-place and disappears under one of die monuments;
therefore, with foot poised each time almost perpendicularly, she
directs her steps to die Street of Tombs. Thidier, in shame and
confusion, Hanold has fled, and is wandering up and down in the

portico of the court without stopping, occupied with settling the
rest of his problem by mental efforts. One thing has become un-
impeachably clear to him; that he was utterly foolish and irrational
to believe that he communed with a young Pompeiian girl who
had become more or less physically alive, again; and this clear
insight into his madness forms incontestably an essential bit of
progress in the return to sound reason. On the other hand, how-
ever, this living girl, with whom other people also communicate, as
with one of a corporeal reality like theirs, is Gradiva, and she
knows his name; for the solution of this riddle his scarcely awak-
ened reason is not strong enough. Emotionally, also, he is not
calm enough to be equal to so difficult a task, for he would most
gladly have been buried two thousand years ago in the Villa of
Diomede, only to be sure of never meeting Zoe-Gradiva again. A
violent longing to see her struggles, meanwhile, with the remnants
of die inclination to flee, which has persisted in him.

Turning at one of the four corners of the colonnade, he sud-
denly recoils. On a fragmentary wall-ruin there sits one of the girls
who met death here in the Villa of Diomede; but that attempt to
take refuge again in the realm of madness is soon put aside; no, it
is Gradiva, who has apparently come to give him the last bit of her
treatment. She interprets rightly his first instinctive movement to
flee, as an attempt to leave the place, and points out to him that he
cannot escape, for outside a frightful cloudburst is in progress.
The merciless girl begins the examination with the question as to
what he intended in connection with the fly on her hand. He does
not find courage to make use of a definite pronoun, but acquires
the more valuable kind needed to put the deciding question.

'"I was— as they say— somewhat confused mentally and ask
pardon that I— the hand— in that way— how I could be so stupid, I
can't understand— but I can't understand either how its owner
could use my name in upbraiding me for my— my madness.'"

'"Your power of understanding has not yet progressed that far,
Norbert Hanold. Of course, I cannot be surprised, for you have
long ago accustomed me to it. To make that discovery again I
should not have needed to come to Pompeii, and you could have
confirmed it for me a good hundred miles nearer.'"

"'A hundred miles nearer; diagonally across from your house,
in the corner house; in my window, in a cage, is a canary,'" she
discloses to the still bewildered man.

This last word touches the hero like a memory from afar. That
is surely the same bird whose song has suggested to him the trip to
Italy.

'"In that house lives my father, Richard Bertgang, professor of
zoology."'

As his neighbor, therefore, she is acquainted with him and his
name. It seems as if the disappointment of a superficial solution is
threatening us— a solution unworthy of our expectations.

As yet Norbert Hanold shows no regained independence of
thought, when he repeats,— '"Then are you— are you Miss Zoe
Bertgang? But she looked quite different—'"

Miss Bertgang' s answer shows then that other relations besides
those of neighborliness have existed between them. She knows
how to intercede for the familiar manner of address, which he has,
of course, used to the noonday spirit, but withdrawn again from
the living girl; she makes former privileges of use to her here. '"If
you find that form of address more suitable between us, I can use
it too, you know, but the other came to me more naturally. I don't
know whether I looked different when we used to run about be-
fore with each other as friends, every day, and occasionally beat
and cuffed each other for a change, but if, in recent years, you had
favored me with even one glance you might perhaps have seen
that I have looked like this for a long time.'" A childhood friend-
ship had therefore existed between the two, perhaps a childhood
love, from which the familiar form of address derived its just-
ification. Isn't this solution perhaps as superficial as the one first
supposed? The fact that it occurs to us that this childhood relation
explains in an unexpected way so many details of what has occur-
red in die present intercourse between them makes the matter es-
sentially deeper. Does it not seem that the blow on Zoe-Gradiva's
hand which Norbert Hanold has so splendidly motivated by the
necessity of solving, experimentally, the question of the physical
existence of the apparition, is, from another standpoint, remark-
ably similar to a revival of the impulse for "beating and cuffing,"
whose sway in childhood Zoe's words have testified to? And when
Gradiva puts to the archaeologist the question whether it does not
seem to him that they have once already, two thousand years ago,
shared their luncheon, does not the incomprehensible question
become suddenly senseful, when we substitute for the historical
past die personal childhood, whose memories persist vividly for
the girl, but seem to be forgotten by the young man? Does not the
idea suddenly dawn upon us that the fancies of the young man
about his Gradiva may be an echo of his childhood memories?
Then diey would, therefore, be no arbitrary products of his
imagination, but determined, without his knowing it, by die exis-
ting material of childhood impressions already forgotten, but still
active in him. We must be able to point out in detail die origin of
these fancies, even if only by conjecture. If, for instance, Gradiva
must be of pure Greek ancestry, die daughter of a respected man,
perhaps of a priest of Ceres, that predisposes us fairly well for an
after-effect of the knowledge of her Greek name— Zoe, and of her
membership in the family of a professor of zoology. If, however,

these fancies of Hanold's are transformed memories, we may ex-
pect to find in the disclosures of Zoe Bertgang, the suggestion of
the sources of these fancies. Let us listen; she tells us of an inti-
mate friendship of childhood; we shall soon learn what further
development this childhood relation had in both.

'"Then up to the time when people call us "Backfisch," for
some unknown reason, I had really acquired a remarkable attach-
ment for you and thought that I could never find a more pleasing
friend in the world. Mother, sister, or brother I had not, you
know; to my father a slow-worm in alcohol was far more inter-
esting than I, and people (I count girls such) must surely have
something with which they can occupy their thoughts and the like.
Then you were that something, but when archaeology overcame
you, I made the discovery that you— excuse the familiarity, but
your new formality sounds absurd to me— I was saying diat I im-
agined that you had become an intolerable person, who had no
longer, at least for me, an eye in his head, a tongue in his moudi,
nor any of die memories that I retained of our childhood friend-
ship. So I probably looked different from what I did formerly for
when, occasionally, I met you at a party, even last winter, you did
not look at me and I did not hear your voice; in this, of course,
there was nothing that marked me out especially, for you treated
all die others in the same way. To you I was but air, and you, with
your shock of light hair, which I had formerly pulled so often,
were as boresome, dry and tongue-tied as a stuffed cockatoo and
at the same time as grandiose as an— archaeopteryx; I believe die
excavated antediluvian bird-monster is so called; but that your
head harbored an imagination so magnificent as here in Pompeii
to consider me as something excavated and restored to life— I had
not surmised that of you; and when you suddenly stood before me
unexpectedly, it cost me some effort at first to understand what
kind of incredible fancy your imagination had invented. Then I
was amused and, in spite of its madness, it was not entirely dis-
pleasing to me. For, as I said, I had not expected it of you.'"

So she thus tells us clearly enough what, with the years, has be-
come of the childhood friendship for both of them. With her it
expanded into an intense love affair, for one must have something,
you know, to which one, that is, a girl, pins her affections. Miss
Zoe, die incarnation of cleverness and clarity, makes her psychic
life, too, quite transparent for us. If it is already the general rule
for a normal girl that she first turns her affection to her father, she
is especially ready to do it, she who has no one but her father in
her family; but this father has nothing left for her; the objects of
science have captured all his interest. So she has to look around
for another person and clings with especial fervor to the playmate
of her youth. When he, too, no longer has any eyes for her, it
does not destroy her love, rather augments it, for he has become

like her father, like him absorbed by science and, by it, isolated
from life and from Zoe. So it is granted to her to be faithful in un-
faithfulness, to find her father again in her beloved, to embrace
both with the same feeling as we may say, to make them both
identical in her emotions. Where do we get justification for this
little psychological analysis, which may easily seem autocratic? In a
single, but intensely characteristic detail the author of the romance
gives it to us. When Zoe pictures for us the transformation of the
playmate of her youth, which seems so sad for her, she insults him
by a comparison with the archaeopteryx, that bird-monster which
belongs to the archaeology of zoology. So she has found a single,
concrete expression for identifying the two people; her resentment
strikes the beloved as well as the father with the same word. The
archaeopteryx is, so to speak, the compromise, or intermediary
representation in which the folly of her beloved coincides with her
thought of an analogous folly of her father.

With the young man, things have taken a different turn. The
science of antiquity overcame him and left to him interest only in
the women of bronze and stone. The childhood friendship died,
instead of developing into a passion, and the memories of it pas-
sed into such absolute forgetfulness that he does not recognize nor
pay any attention to the friend of his youth, when he meets her in
society. Of course, when we continue our observations, we may
doubt if "forgetfulness" is the right psychological term for the fate
of these memories of our archaeologist. There is a kind of forget-
ting which distinguishes itself by the difficulty with which the me-
mory is awakened, even by strong objective appeals, as if a subjec-
tive resistance struggled against the revival. Such forgetting has re-
ceived the name "repression" in psychopathology; the case which
Jensen has presented to us seems to be an example of repression.
Now we do not know, in general, whether, in psychic life, for-
getting an impression is connected with the destruction of its me-
mory-trace; about repression we can assert with certainty that it
does not coincide with the destruction, the obliteration, of the me-
mory. The repressed material cannot, as a rule, break through, of
itself, as a memory, but remains potent and effective. Some day,
under external influence, it causes psychic results which one may
accept as products of transformation or as remnants of forgotten
memories; and if one does not view them as such, they remain
incomprehensible. In the fancies of Norbert Hanold about Gra-
diva, we thought we recognized already the remnants of the re-
pressed memories of his childhood friendship with Zoe Bertgang.
Quite legitimately one may expect such a recurrence of the re-
pressed material, if the man's erotic feelings cling to the repressed
ideas, if his erotic life has been involved in the repression. Then
there is truth in the old Latin proverb which was perhaps originally
aimed at expulsion through external influences, not at inner

conflict: "You may drive out natural disposition with a two-
pronged fork, but it will always return," but it does not tell all, an-
nounces only the fact of the recurrence of repressed material, and
does not describe at all the most remarkable manner of this recur-
rence, which is accomplished as if by malicious treason; the very
thing which has been chosen as a means of repression— like die
"two-pronged fork" of die proverb— becomes the carrier of die
thing recurring; in and behind the agencies of repression the ma-
terial repressed finally asserts itself victoriously. A well-known
etching by Felicien Rops illustrates this fact, which is generally
overlooked and lacks acceptance, more impressively dian many
explanations could; and he does it in the typical case of die repres-
sion in die lives of saints and penitents. From the temptations of
die world, an ascetic monk has sought refuge in the image of the
crucified Savior. Then, phantom-like, this cross sinks and, in its
stead, diere rises shining, die image of a voluptuous, unclad wo-
man, in die same position of die crucifixion. Other painters of less
psychological insight have, in such representations of temptation,
depicted sin as bold and triumphant, near die Savior on die cross.
Rops, alone, has allowed it to take the place of the Savior on the
cross; he seems to have known that the thing repressed proceeds,
at its recurrence, from die agency of repression, itself.

If Norbert Hanold were a living person, who had, by means of
archaeology, driven love and the memory of his childhood friend-
ship out of his life, it would now be legitimate and correct diat an
antique relief should awaken in him die forgotten memory of die
girl beloved in his childhood; it would be his well-deserved fate to
have fallen in love with the stone representation of Gradiva, be-
hind which, by virtue of an unexplained resemblance, die living
and neglected Zoe becomes effective.

Miss Zoe, herself, seems to share our conception of the
delusion of the young archaeologist, for die pleasure which she
expresses at die end of her "unreserved, detailed and instructive
lecture" is hardly based on anything other than her readiness to
refer his entire interest in Gradiva to her person. This is exactly
what she does not believe him capable of and what, in spite of all
die disguises of die delusion, she recognizes as such. Her psychic
treatment of him has a beneficent effect; he feels himself free, as
the delusion is now replaced by that of which it can be only a dis-
torted and unsatisfactory copy. He immediately remembers and
recognizes her as his good, cheerful, clever comrade who has not
changed essentially; but he finds something else most strange—

'"That a person must die to become alive again;'" says the girl,
'"but for archaeologists, that is, of course necessary."' She has ap-
parently not yet pardoned him for die detour which he made from
die childhood friendship through the science of antiquity to this
relation which has recently been established.

'"No, I mean your name— Because Bertgang has the same
meaning as Gradiva and signifies "the splendid one splendid in
walking.'"

Even we are not prepared for that. Our hero begins to rise
from his humility and to play an active role. He is, apparently, en-
tirely cured of his delusion, lifted far above it, and proves this by
tearing asunder the last threads of the web of delusion. Patients,
also, who have been freed from the compulsion of their delusion,
by the disclosure of the repression behind it, always act in just that
way. When they have once understood, they themselves offer the
solutions for the last and most significant riddles of their strange
condition in suddenly emerging ideas. We had already believed,
of course, that the Greek ancestry of the mythical Gradiva was an
after-effect of the Greek name, Zoe, but with the name, Gradiva,
we had ventured nothing; we had supposed it the free creation of
Norbert Hanold's imagination and behold! this very name now
shows itself to be a remnant, really a translation of the repressed
family-name of the supposedly forgotten beloved of his youth.

The derivation and solution of the delusion are now com-
pleted. What follows may well serve as a harmonious conclusion
of the tale. In regard to the future, it can have only a pleasant
effect on us, if the rehabilitation of the man, who formerly had to
play the lamentable role of one needing to be cured, progresses,
and he succeeds in awakening in the girl some of the emotions
which he formerly experienced. Thus it happens that he makes
her jealous by mentioning the congenial young lady, who disturb-
ed them in Meleager's house, and by the acknowledgment that the
latter was the first girl who had impressed him much. When Zoe
is then about to take a cool departure, with the remark that now
everything is reasonable again, she herself not least of all, that he
might look up Gisa Hartleben, or whatever her name might now
be, and be of scientific assistance to her about the purpose of her
stay in Pompeii, but she has to go now to the Albergo del Sole
where her father is already waiting for her at lunch, perhaps they
may see each other again sometime at a party in Germany or on
the moon, he seizes upon the troublesome fly as a means of taking
possession of her cheek, first, and then of her lips, and assumes
the aggressive, which is the duty of a man in the game of love.
Only once more does a shadow seem to fall on their happiness,
when Zoe reminds him that now she must really go to her father,
who will otherwise starve in the "Sole." '"Your father— what will
he—?'"

But the clever girl knows how to silence the apprehension
quickly: '"Probably he will do nothing; I am not an indispensable
piece in his zoological collection; if I were, my heart would prob-
ably not have clung to you so unwisely.'" Should the father, how-
ever, by way of exception, in this case, have an opinion different

from hers, there is a sure method. Hanold needs only to go over
to Capri, there catch a lacerta faraglionensis, for which purpose he
may practise the technique on her little finger, then set the animal
free again here, catch it before the eyes of the zoologist and give
him the choice of the faraglionensis on the mainland or his daugh-
ter, a proposal in which mockery, as one may easily note, is com-
bined with bitterness, an admonition to the betrothed, also, not to
follow too closely the model after which his beloved has chosen
him. Norbert Hanold sets us at rest on this matter, as he ex-
presses, by all sorts of apparently trivial symptoms, the great trans-
formation which has come over him. He voices the intention of
taking a wedding trip with his Zoe to Italy and Pompeii, as if he
had never been indignant at the newly- married travelers, Augustus
and Gretchen. His feelings towards this happy couple, who so un-
necessarily traveled more than one hundred miles from their
German home, have entirely disappeared from his memory.
Certainly the author is right when he cites such weakening of
memory as the most valuable mark of a mental change. Zoe re-
plies to the announced desire about the destination of their jour-
ney, "by her childhood friend who had, in a way, also been ex-
cavated from die ashes, " that she does not yet feel quite alive
enough for such geographical decision.

Beautiful reality has now triumphed over the delusion. Yet an
honor still awaits the latter before the two leave Pompeii. When
they have arrived at the Hercules Gate, where, at the beginning of
the Strada Consolare, old stepping-stones cross the street, Norbert
Hanold stops and asks the girl to go ahead. She understands him,
and "raising her dress slightly with her left hand, Gradiva rediviva
Zoe Bertgang, viewed by him with dreamily observing eyes, cros-
sed with her calmly buoyant walk, through the sunlight, over the
stepping-stones." With the triumph of eroticism, what was beauti-
ful and valuable in the delusion is now acknowledged.

With the last comparison of "the childhood friend excavated
from the ashes," the author of the story has, however, put into our
hand the key of the symbolism which the delusion of the hero
made use of in the disguise of the repressed memory. There is no
better analog}' for repression, which at the same time makes inac-
cessible and conserves something psychic, than the burial which
was die fate of Pompeii, and from which the city was able to arise
again through work with the spade. Therefore in his imagination
the young archaeologist had to transport to Pompeii the original
figure of the relief which reminded him of the forgotten beloved
of his youth. Jensen, however, had a good right to linger over the
significant resemblance which his fine sense traced out between a
bit of psychic occurrence in the individual and a single historical
event in the history of man.

II

IT was really our intention to investigate with the aid of
definite analytic method only the two or three dreams which are
found in the tale "Gradiva"; how did it happen then that we al-
lowed ourselves to be carried away with the analysis of the whole
story and the examination of the psychic processes of the two chief
characters? Well, that was no superfluous work, but a necessary
preparation. Even when we wish to understand the real dreams of
an actual person, we must concern ourselves intensively with the
character and the fortunes of this person, not only the experiences
shortly before the dream, but also those of the remote past. I
think, however, that we are not yet free to turn to our real task, but
must still linger over the piece of fiction itself, and perforin more
preparatory work.

Our readers will, of course, have noticed with surprise that till
now we have considered Norbert Hanold and Zoe Bertgang in all
their psychic expressions and activities, as if they were real in-
dividuals and not creatures of an author, as if the mind of their
creator were absolutely transparent, not a refractory and cloudy
medium; and our procedure must seem all the more surprising
when the author of "Gradiva" expressly disavows the portrayal of
reality by calling his tale a "Fancy." We find, however, that all his
pictures copy reality so faithfully that we should not contradict if
"Gradiva" were called not a "Fancy," but a study in psychiatry.
Only in two points has Wilhelm Jensen made use of his license, to
create suppositions which do not seem to have roots in the earth
of actual law: first, when he has the young archaeologist find a
genuinely antique bas-relief which, not only in the detail of the
position of the foot in walking, but in all details, the shape of the
face, and the bearing, copies a person living much later, so that he
can consider the physical manifestation of this person to be the
cast endowed with life; second, when the hero is caused to meet
the living girl in Pompeii, whither his fancy has transported the
dead girl, while he separates himself, by the journey to Pompeii,
from the living girl, whom he has noticed on the street of his home
city; this second instance is no tremendous deviation from the pos-
sibilities of life; it asks aid only of chance, which undeniably plays
a part in so many human fates, and, moreover, makes it reason-
able, for this chance reflects again the destiny which has decreed
that through flight one is delivered over to the very thing that one
is fleeing from. More fantastic, and originating solely in the
author's arbitrariness, seems the first supposition which brings in
its train the detailed resemblance of the cast to the living girl,
where moderation might have limited the conformity to the one
trait of the position of the foot in walking. One might then have

tried to let one's own imagination play in order to establish con-
nection with reality. The name Bertgang might point to the fact
that the women of that family had been distinguished, even in an-
cient times, by the characteristic of a beautiful gait, and by heredity
the German Bertgang was connected with those Romans, a wom-
an of whose family had caused the ancient artist to fix in a bas-
relief the peculiarity of her walk. As the individual variations of
human structure are, however, not independent of one another,
and as the ancient types, which we come upon in the collections,
are actually always emerging again in our midst, it would not be
entirely impossible that a modern Bertgang should repeat again
the form of her ancient forbear, even in all the other traits of her
physique. Inquiry of the author of the story for the sources of this
creation might well be wiser than such speculation; a good pro-
spect of solving again a bit of supposed arbitrariness would prob-
ably then appear. As, however, we have not access to the psychic
life of the author, we leave to him the undiminished right of
building up a thoroughly valid development on an improbable
supposition, a right which Shakespeare, for example, has asserted
in "King Lear."

Otherwise, we wish to repeat, Wilhelm Jensen has given us an
absolutely correct study in psychiatry, in which we may measure
our understanding of psychic life, a story of illness and cure ad-
apted to the inculcation of certain fundamental teachings of
medical psychology. Strange enough that he should have done
this! What if, in reply to questioning, he should deny this in-
tention? It is so easy to draw comparisons and to put constructions
on things. Are we not rather the ones who have woven secret
meanings, which were foreign to him, into the beautiful poetic
tale? Possibly; we shall come back to that later. As a preliminary,
however, we have tried to refrain from interpretations with that
tendency, by reproducing the story, in almost every case, from the
very words of the writer; and we have had him furnish text as well
as commentary, himself. Any one who will compare our text with
that of "Gradiva" will have to grant this.

Perhaps in the judgment of the majority we are doing a poor
sendee for him when we declare his work a study in psychiatry. An
author is to avoid all contact with psychiatry, we are told, and leave
to physicians the portrayal of morbid psychic conditions. In reality
no true author has ever heeded this commandment. The portrayal
of the psychic life of human beings is, of course, his most especial
domain; he was always the precursor of science and of scientific
psychology. The borderline between normal and morbid psychic
conditions is, in a way, a conventional one, and, in another way, in
such a state of flux that probably every one of us oversteps it many
times in the course of a day. On the other hand, psychiatry would
do wrong to wish to limit itself continually to the study of those

serious and cloudy illnesses which arise from rude disturbances of
die delicate psychic apparatus. It has no less interest in the lesser
and adjustable deviations from die normal which we cannot yet
trace back fardier dian disturbances in the play of psychic forces;
indeed, it is by means of these diat it can understand normal
conditions, as well as the manifestations of serious illness. Thus
the author cannot yield to the psychiatrist nor die psychiatrist to
die audior, and die poetic treatment of a dieme from psychiatry
may result correctly without damage to beauty.

The imaginative representation of die story of illness and its
treatment, which we can survey better after finishing the story and
relieving our own suspense, is really correct. Now we wish to re-
produce it with the technical expressions of our science, in doing
which it will not be necessary to repeat what has already been
related.

Norbert Hanold's condition is called a "delusion" often
enough by the author of the story, and we also have no reason to
reject this designation. We can mention two chief characteristics of
"delusion," by which it is not, of course exhaustively described,
but is admittedly differentiated from other disturbances. It belongs
first to diat group of illnesses which do not directly affect the
physical, but express diemselves only by psychic signs, and it is
distinguished secondly by the fact diat "fancies" have assumed
control, that is, are believed and have acquired influence on ac-
tions. If we recall the journey to Pompeii to seek in the ashes the
peculiarly-formed footprints of Gradiva, we have in it a splendid
example of an act under the sway of the delusion. The psychiatrist
would perhaps assign Norbert Hanold's delusion to the great
group of paranoia and designate it as a "fetichistic erotomania,"
because falling in love with die bas-relief would be die most
striking thing to him and because, to his conception, which coars-
ens everything, the interest of the young archaeologist in die feet
and foot-position of women must seem suspiciously like fetichism.
All such names and divisions of the different kinds of delusion
are, however, substantially useless and awkward.'

The old-school psychiatrist would, moreover, stamp our hero
as a degenere, because he is a person capable, on account of such
strange predilections, of developing a delusion, and would in-
vestigate the heredity which has unrelentingly driven him to such a
fate. In this, however, Jensen does not follow him; with good
reason, he brings us nearer to the hero to facilitate for us aesthetic
sympathy with him; with the diagnosis "degenere," whether or not
it may be justifiable to us scientifically, die young archaeologist is
at once moved fardier from us, for we, readers, are, of course,
normal people and die measure of humanity. The essential facts
of heredity and constitution in connection with this condition also

concern die author of "Gradiva" little; instead, he is engrossed in
die personal, psychic state which can give rise to such a delusion.

In an important point, Norbert Hanold acts quite differently
from ordinary people. He has no interest in die living woman; sci-
ence, which he serves, has taken this interest from him and trans-
ferred it to women of stone or bronze. Let us not consider this an
unimportant peculiarity; it is really die basis of die story, for one
day it happens diat a single such bas-relief claims for itself all the
interest which would odierwise belong only to die living woman,
and diereby originates the delusion. Before our eyes diere is then
unfolded the story of how this delusion is cured by a fortunate set
of circumstances, the interest transferred back again from the cast
to the living girl. The audior of die story does not allow us to trace
the influences because of which our hero begins to avoid women;
he only suggests to us diat such conduct is not explained by his
predisposition which is invested with a rather fanciful— we might
add, erotic— need. We learn later also that in his childhood he did
not avoid other children; he was dien friendly with die little girl,
was inseparable from her, shared with her his lunches, cuffed her,
and was pulled around by her. In such attachment, such a com-
bination of tenderness and aggression, is expressed the incomplete
eroticism of child life, which expresses its activities first spitefully
and then irresistibly and which, during childhood, only physicians
and writers usually recognize as eroticism. Our author gives us to
understand clearly that he has diose intentions, for he suddenly
causes to awaken in his hero, with suitable motive, a lively interest
in the gait and foot-position of women, an interest which, in sci-
ence, as well as among the ladies of his home-city, must bring him
into disrepute as a foot-fetichist, and is to us, however, necessarily
derived from die memory of his childhood playmate. The girl, to
be sure, was characterized, as a child, by die beautiful walk with
her foot almost perpendicular as she stepped out, and dirough the
portrayal of this very gait an antique bas-relief later acquired for
Norbert Hanold great significance. Let us add, moreover, immedi-
ately, diat the audior of "Gradiva" stands in complete agreement
with science in regard to the derivation of the remarkable manifes-
tation of fetichism. Since die investigations by Binet we really try to
trace fetichism back to erotic impressions of childhood.

The condition of continued avoidance of women gives the
personal qualification, as we say, die disposition for die formation
of a delusion; die development of psychic disturbance begins at
the moment when a chance impression awakens the forgotten
childhood experiences which are emphasized in an erotic way that
is at least traceable. Awakened is really not the right term, how-
ever, when we consider die furdier results. We must reproduce
our audior's correct representation in a mode of expression artisti-
cally correct, and psychological. On seeing the relief Norbert

Hanold does not remember that he has seen such a foot-position
in the friend of his youth; he certainly does not remember and yet
every effect of the relief proceeds from such connection with the
impression of his childhood. The childhood-impression, stirred,
becomes active, so tiiat it begins to show activity, though it does
not appear in consciousness, but remains "unconscious," a term
which we now use unavoidably in psychopadiology. This term
"unconscious" we should now like to see withdrawn from all the
conflicts of philosophers and natural philosophers, which have on-
ly etymological significance. For psychic processes which are active
and yet at die same time do not come dirough into die con-
sciousness of the person referred to, we have at present no better
name and we mean nodiing else by "unconsciousness." If many
thinkers wish to dispute as unreasonable the existence of such an
unconscious, we think they have never busied themselves with
analogous psychic phenomena, and are under the spell of the
common idea that everything psychic which is active and intensive
becomes, diereby, at the same time, conscious, and they have still
to learn what our author knows very well, tiiat diere are, of course,
psychic processes, which, in spite of the fact that they are intensive
and show energetic activities, remain far removed from conscious-
ness.

We said once that die memories of die childhood relations
with Zoe are in a state of "repression" with Norbert Hanold; and
we have called them "unconscious memories." Here we must, of
course, turn our attention to die relation between the two technical
terms which seem to coincide in meaning. It is not hard to clear
this up. "Unconscious" is die broader term, "repressed," die nar-
rower. Everytiiing that is repressed is unconscious; but we cannot
assert tiiat everything unconscious is repressed. If Hanold, at the
sight of die relief, had remembered his Zoe's manner of walking,
then a formerly unconscious memory would have become imme-
diately active and conscious, and dius would have shown tiiat it
was not formerly repressed. "Unconscious" is a purely descriptive
term, in many respects indefinite and, so to speak, static; "repres-
sed" is a dynamic expression which takes into consideration the
play of psychic forces and die fact tiiat there is present an effort to
express all psychic activities, among them tiiat of becoming con-
scious again, but also a counterforce, a resistance, which might
hinder a part of these psychic activities, among these, also, getting
into consciousness. The mark of the repressed material is tiiat, in
spite of its intensity, it cannot break dirough into consciousness. In
Hanold's case, therefore, it was a matter, at the appearance of the
bas-relief on his horizon, of a repressed unconscious, in short of a
repression.

The memories of his childhood association with die girl who
walks beautifully are repressed in Norbert Hanold, but diis is not

yet the correct view of the psychological situation. We remain on
the surface so long as we treat only of memories and ideas. The
only valuable tilings in psychic life are, rather, die emotions. All
psychic powers are significant only through their fitness to awaken
emotions. Ideas are repressed only because they are connected
with liberations of emotions, which are not to come to light; it
would be more correct to say diat repression deals with the emo-
tions, but these are comprehensible to us only in connection with
ideas. Thus, in Norbert Hanold, the erotic feelings are repressed,
and, as his eroticism neither knows nor has known another object
than Zoe Bertgang of his youth, the memories of her are for-
gotten. The antique bas-relief awakens the slumbering eroticism in
him and makes the childhood memories active. On account of a
resistance in him to the eroticism, these memories can become
active only as unconscious. What now happens in him is a struggle
between the power of eroticism and the forces that are repressing
it; die result of diis struggle is a delusion.

Our audior has omitted to give die motive whence originates
die repression of the erotic life in his hero; die latter's interest in
science is, of course, only die means of which die repression
makes use; die physician would have to probe deeper here, per-
haps in diis case without finding die foundation. Probably, how-
ever, die audior of "Gradiva," as we have admiringly emphasized,
has not hesitated to represent to us how die awakening of the re-
pressed eroticism results from the very sphere of the means which
are serving the repression. It is righdy an antique, the bas-relief of
a woman, through which our archaeologist is snatched and ad-
monished out of his alienation from love to [clear away die guilt
we are born with] . '

The first manifestations of die process now stimulated by die
bas-relief are fancies which play with the person represented by it.
The model appears to him to be something "of the present," in
the best sense, as if die artist had fixed the girl walking on the
street from life. The name, Gradiva, which he forms from the epi-
thet of the war-god advancing to battle, Mars Gradivus, he lends to
die ancient girl; with more and more definitions he endows her
with a personality. She may be the daughter of an esteemed man,
perhaps of a patrician, who is associated with the temple service of
a divinity; he believes that he reads Greek ancestry in her features,
and finally this forces him to transport her far from die confusion
of a metropolis to more peaceful Pompeii, where he has her walk-
ing over die lava stepping-stones which make possible the crossing
of die street. These feats of fancy seem arbitrary enough and yet
again harmlessly unsuspicious. Even when from them is produced,
for die first time, die impulse to act, when die archaeologist, op-
pressed by die problem whether such foot-position corresponds to
reality, begins observations from life, in looking at the feet of

contemporary women and girls, this act covers itself by conscious,
scientific motives, as if all the interest in the bas-relief of Gradiva
had originated in his professional interest in archaeology. The
women and girls on the street, whom he uses as objects for his in-
vestigation, must, of course assume a different, coarsely erotic con-
ception of his conduct and we must admit that they are right. For
us, there is no doubt that Hanold knows as little about his motives
as about the origin of his fancies concerning Gradiva. These latter
are, as we shall learn later, echoes of his memories of the beloved
of his youth, remnants of these memories, transformations and
disfigurements of them, after diey have failed to push into con-
sciousness in unchanged form. The so-called aesthetic judgment
that the relief represents "something of the present" is substituted
for the knowledge that such a gait belongs to a girl known to him
and crossing streets in die present; behind die impression "from
life" and the fancy about her Greek traits, is hidden the memory
of her name, Zoe, which, in Greek, means life; Gradiva is, as the
man finally cured of the delusion tells us, a good translation of her
family-name, Bertgang, which means splendid or magnificent in
walking; die decisions about her father arise from die knowledge
diat Zoe Bertgang is die daughter of an esteemed university in-
structor, which is probably translated into the antique as temple
sendee. Finally his imagination transports her to Pompeii not "be-
cause her calm, quiet manner seems to require it," but because, in
his science, there is found no odier nor better analogy to die
remarkable condition in which he has traced out, by vague
reconnoitering, his memories of his childhood friendship. If he
once covered up what was so close to him, his own childhood,
with the classic past, then die burial of Pompeii, this disap-
pearance, with die preservation of the past, offers a striking
resemblance to the repression of which he has knowledge by
means of so-called "endopsychic" perceptions. The same symbol-
ism, dierefore, which the author has the girl use consciously at the
end of die tale, is working in him.

'"I said to myself that I should certainly dig up something in-
teresting alone here. Of course, I had not reckoned at all on the
find which I made,'" the girl answers to the announced desire
about the destination of their journey, "by her childhood friend
who had, in a way, also been excavated from die ashes."

Thus we find at the very beginning of the performances of
Hanold's fancies and actions, a two-fold determination, a deriva-
tion from two different sources. One determination is the one
which appears to Hanold, himself; the odier, the one which dis-
closes itself to us upon reexamination of his psychic processes.
One, die conscious one, is related to die person of Hanold; die
odier is die one entirely unconscious to him. One originates
entirely from the series of associations connected with archae-

ological science; the other, however, proceeds from the repressed
memories which have become active in him, and the emotional
impulses attached to them. The one seems superficial, and covers
up die odier, which masks itself behind the former. One might say
that the scientific motivation serves die unconscious eroticism as
cloak, and diat science has placed itself completely at die sendee
of die delusion, but one may not forget, either, diat the uncon-
scious determination can effect nothing but what is at die time sat-
isfactory to die scientific conscious. The symptoms of delusion-
fancies as well as acts— are results of a compromise between two
psychic streams, and in a compromise the demands of each of the
two parties are considered; each party has been obliged to forego
something that he wished to carry out. Where a compromise has
been established, there was a struggle, here die conflict assumed
by us between die suppressed eroticism and die forces which keep
it alive in the repression. In the formation of a delusion diis strug-
gle is never ended.

Attack and resistance are renewed after every compromise-
formation, which is, so to speak, never fully satisfactory. This our
author also knows and therefore he causes a feeling of discontent,
a peculiar restlessness, to dominate his hero in this phase of the
disturbance, as preliminary to and guarantee of further develop-
ments.

These significant peculiarities of the two-fold determination
for fancies and decisions, of the formation of conscious pretexts
for actions, for die motivation of which the repressed has given the
greater contribution, will, in the furdier progress of the story, oc-
cur to us oftener and perhaps more clearly; and diis rightfully, for
in this Jensen has grasped and represented die never-failing, chief
characteristic of die morbid psychic processes. The development
of Norbert Hanold's delusion progresses in a dream, which,
caused by no new event, seems to proceed entirely from his psy-
chic life, which is occupied by a conflict. Yet let us stop before we
proceed to test whether the audior of "Gradiva," in the formation
of his dreams, meets our expectation of a deeper understanding.
Let us first ask what psychiatry has to say about his ideas of the
origin of a delusion, how it stands on the matter of the role of
repression and the unconscious, of conflict and compromise-
formation. Briefly, can our author's representation of the genesis
of a delusion stand before the judgment of science?

And here we must give the perhaps unexpected answer that,
unfortunately, matters are here actually just reversed; science does
not stand before the accomplishment of our audior. Between the
essential facts of heredity and constitution, and the seemingly com-
plete creations of delusion, there yawns a breach which we find
filled up by die writer of "Gradiva." Science does not yet recognize
die significance of repression nor die fact that it needs the un-

conscious for explanation to the world of psychopathological phe-
nomena; it does not seek the basis of delusion in psychic conflict,
and does not regard its symptoms as a compromise-formation.
Then our author stands alone against all science? No, not that— if
the present writer may reckon his own works as science. For, he,
himself, has for some years interceded— and until recently almost
alone— for the views which he finds here in "Gradiva" by W.
Jensen, and he has presented them in technical terms. He has
pointed out exhaustively, for the conditions known as hysteria and
obsession, the suppression of impulses and the repression of the
ideas, through which the suppressed impulse is represented, as a
characteristic condition of psychic disturbance, and he has
repeated the same view soon afterwards for many kinds of
delusion." Whether the impulses which are, for this reason, con-
sidered are always components of the sex-impulse, or might be of
a different nature, is a problem of indifference in the analysis of
"Gradiva," as, in the case chosen by the author, it is a matter only
of the suppression of the erotic feeling. The views concerning
psychic conflict, and the formation of symptoms by compromises
between the two psychic forces which are struggling with each
other, the present writer has found valid in cases professionally
treated and actually observed, in exactly the same way that he was
able to observe it in Norbert Hanold, the invention of our author.'
The tracing back of neurotic, especially of hysterically morbid
activities to the influence of unconscious thoughts, P. Janet, the
pupil of the great Charcot, had undertaken before the present
writer, and in conjunction with Josef Breuer in Vienna. 8

It had actually occurred to the present writer, when, in the
years following 1893, he devoted himself to investigations of the
origin of psychic disturbances, to seek confirmation of his results
from authors, and therefore it was no slight surprise to him to
learn that in "Gradiva," published in 1903, an author gave to his
creation the very foundation which the former supposed that he,
himself, was finding authority for, as new, from his experiences as
a physician. How did the author come upon the same knowledge
as the physician, at least upon a procedure which would suggest
that he possessed it?

Norbert Hanold's delusion, we said, acquires further develop-
ment through a dream, which he has in the midst of his efforts to
authenticate a gait like Gradiva's in the streets of his home-city.
The content of this dream we can outline briefly. The dreamer is
in Pompeii on that day which brought destruction to the un-
fortunate city, experiences the horrors without, himself, getting
into danger, suddenly sees Gradiva walking there and immediately
understands, as quite natural, that, as she is, of course, a Pom-
peiian, she is living in her native city and "without his having any
suspicion of it, was his contemporary." He is seized with fear for

her, calls to her, whereupon she turns her face toward him mo-
mentarily. Yet she walks on without heeding him at all, lies down
on the steps of the Apollo temple, and is buried by the rain of
ashes, after her face has changed color as if it were turning to white
marble, until it completely resembles a bas-relief. On awakening,
he interprets die noise of the metropolis, which reaches his ear, as
the cries for help of the desperate inhabitants of Pompeii and the
booming of die turbulent sea. The feeling diat what he has
dreamed has really happened to him persists for some time after
his awakening, and die conviction that Gradiva lived in Pompeii
and died on that fatal day remains from this dream as a new, sup-
plementary fact for his delusion.

It is less easy for us to say what die author of "Gradiva" intend-
ed by diis dream, and what caused him to connect the develop-
ment of diis delusion directly with a dream. Assiduous investiga-
tion of dreams has, to be sure, gathered enough examples of the
fact diat mental disturbance is connected with and proceeds from
dreams, 9 and even in the life-history of certain eminent men,
impulses for important deeds and decisions are said to have been
engendered by dreams; but our comprehension does not gain
much by diese analogies; let us hold, dierefore, to our case, the
case of die archaeologist, Norbert Hanold, a fiction of our author.
At which end must one lay hold of such a dream to introduce
meaning into it, if it is not to remain an unnecessary adornment of
fiction? I can imagine diat the reader exclaims at diis place; "The
dream is, of course, easy to explain— a simple anxiety-dream,
caused by die noise of die metropolis, which is given the new
interpretation of the destruction of Pompeii, by die archaeologist
busied with his Pompeiian girl!" On account of die commonly
prevailing disregard of die activities of dreams, one usually limits
the demands for dream-explanations so that one seeks for a part
of die dream-content an external excitation which covers itself by
means of the content. This external excitation for die dream
would be given by the noise which wakens the sleeper; the interest
in diis dream would be thereby terminated. Would diat we had
even one reason to suppose diat die metropolis had been noisier
tiian usual on this morning! If, for example, our author had not
omitted to inform us diat Hanold had diat night, contrary to his
custom, slept by an open window! What a shame diat our audior
didn't take the trouble! And if an anxiety-dream were only so sim-
ple a thing! No, this interest is not terminated in so simple a way.

The connection with the external, sensory stimulus is not at all
essential for die dream-formation. The sleeper can neglect diis ex-
citation from die outer world; he may be awakened by it widiout
forming a dream, he may also weave it into his dream, as happens
here, if it is of no use to him from any odier motive; and there is
an abundance of dreams for whose content such a determination

by a sensory excitation of the sleeper cannot be shown. No, let us
try another way.

Perhaps we can start from the residue which the dream leaves
in Hanold's waking life. It had formerly been his fancy that Gra-
diva was a Pompeiian. Now this assumption becomes a certainty
and the second certainty is added that she was buried there in the
year 79. Sorrowful feelings accompany this progress of die forma-
tion of die delusion like an echo of die fear which had filled die
dream. This new grief about Gradiva will seem to us not exacdy
comprehensible; Gradiva would now have been dead for many
centuries even if she had been saved in die year 79 from de-
struction. Or ought one to be permitted to squabble dius widi ei-
dier Norbert Hanold or his creator? Here, too, no way seeius to
lead to explanation. We wish, nevertheless, to remark that a very
painful, emotional stress clings to the augmentation which die
delusion derives from diis dream.

Otherwise, however, our perplexity is not dispelled. This
dream does not explain itself; we must decide to borrow from
"Traumdeutung" by die present writer, and to use some of the
rules given there for die solution of dreams.

One of diese rules is that a dream is regularly connected with
die day before die dream. Our author seems to wish to intimate
that he has followed this rule by connecting die dream directly
with Hanold's "pedestrian investigations." Now die latter means
nothing but a search for Gradiva whom he expects to recognize by
her characteristic manner of walking. The dream ought, dierefore,
to contain a reference to where Gradiva is to be found. It really
does contain it by showing her in Pompeii, but diat is no news for
us.

Another rule says: If, after die dream, die reality of the dream-
pictures continues unusually long so that one cannot free himself
from die dream, this is not a kind of mistake in judgment called
forth by the vividness of the dream-pictures, but is a psychic act in
itself, an assurance which refers to die dream-content, that some-
thing in it is as real as it has been dreamed to be, and one is right
to believe this assurance. If we stop at diese two rules, we must
decide diat the dream gives real information about the where-
abouts of Gradiva, who is being sought. We now know Hanold's
dream; does the application of these two rules lead to any sensible
meaning?

Strange to say, yes. This meaning is disguised only in a special
way so that one does not recognize it immediately. Hanold learns
in the dream that the girl sought lives in die city and in his own
day. That is, of course, true of Zoe Bertgang, only diat in his
dream the city is not die German university-city, but Pompeii, the
time not die present, but die year 79, according to our reckoning.
It is a kind of disfigurement by displacement; not Gradiva is trans-

ported to the present, but the dreamer to the past; but we are also
given the essential and new fact that he shares locality and time
with the girl sought. Whence, then, this dissimulation and disguise
which must deceive us as well as the dreamer about the peculiar
meaning and content of the dream? Well, we have already means
at hand to give us a satisfactory answer to this question.

Let us recall all that we have heard about the nature and origin
of fancies, these preliminaries of delusion. They are substitution
for and remnants of different repressed memories, which a re-
sistance does not allow to push into consciousness, which, how-
ever, become conscious by heeding the censor of resistance, by
means of transformations and disfigurements. After this compro-
mise is completed, the former memories have become fancies,
which may easily be misunderstood by the conscious person, that
is, may be understood to be the ruling psychic force. Now let us
suppose that the dream-pictures are the so-called physiological
delusion-products of a man, the compromise-results of that strug-
gle between what is repressed and what is dominant, which exist
probably even in people absolutely normal in the daytime. Then
we understand that we have to consider tire dream something dis-
figured behind which there is to be sought something else, not
disfigured, but, in a sense, something offensive, like Hanold's re-
pressed memories behind his fancies. One expresses tire admitted
opposition by distinguishing what the dreamer remembers on
waking, as manifest dream-content, from what formed the basis of
the dream before tire censor's disfigurement, the latent dream-
thoughts. To interpret a dream, then, means to translate the
manifest dream-content into the latent dream-thoughts, which
make retrogressive tire disfigurement that had to be approved by
tire resistance censor. When we turn these deliberations to the
dream which is occupying us, we find that the latent dream-
thoughts must have been as follows: "The girl who has that beauti-
ful walk, whom you are seeking, lives really in this city with you;"
but in this form tire thought could not become conscious; in its
way there stood the fact that a fancy had established, as a result of
a former compromise, the idea that Gradiva was a Pompeiian girl,
and therefore nothing remained, if the actual fact of her living in
tire same locality and at the same time was to be perceived, but to
assume the disfigurement: you are living in Pompeii at the time of
Gradiva; and this then is the idea which the manifest dream-
content realizes and represents as a present time which he is living
in.

A dream is rarely tire representation, one might say the staging,
of a single thought, but generally of a number of them, a web of
thoughts. In Hanold's dream there is conspicuous another com-
ponent of the content, whose disfigurement is easily put aside so
that one may learn the latent idea represented by it. This is the

end of the dream to which die assurance of reality can also be ex-
tended. In the dream die beautiful walker, Gradiva, is transformed
into a bas-relief. That is, of course, nothing but an ingenious and
poetic representation of the actual procedure. Hanold had, in-
deed, transferred his interest from the living girl to the bas-relief;
the beloved had been transformed into a stone relief. The latent
dream-thoughts, which remain unconscious, wish to transform the
relief back into the living girl; in connection widi die foregoing
they speak to him somewhat as follows: "You are, of course,
interested in die bas-relief of Gradiva only because it reminds you
of die present, here-living Zoe." But diis insight would mean the
end of the delusion, if it could become conscious.

Is it our duty to substitute unconscious thoughts dius for every
single bit of the manifest dream-content? Strictly speaking, yes; in
die interpretation of a dream which had actually been dreamed,
we should not be allowed to avoid diis duty. The dreamer would
then have to give us an exhaustive account. It is easily understood
that we cannot enforce such a demand in connection with the
creature of our author; we will not, however, overlook the fact diat
we have not yet submitted the chief content of this dream to die
work of interpretation and translation.

Hanold' s dream is, of course, an anxiety-dream. Its content is
fearful; anxiety is felt by die dreamer in sleep, and painful feelings
remain after it. That is not of any great help for our attempt at ex-
planation; we are again forced to borrow largely from die teachings
of dream-interpretation. This admonishes us not to fall into the
error of deriving the fear that is felt in a dream from die content of
a dream, not to use die dream-content like the content of ideas of
waking life. It calls to our attention how often we dream the most
horrible tilings without feeling any trace of fear. Radier die true
fact is a quite different one, which cannot be easily guessed, but
can certainly be proved. The fear of die anxiety-dream cor-
responds to a sex-feeling, a libidinous emotion, like every neurotic
fear, and has, through the process of repression, proceeded from
the libido. 1 " In die interpretation of dreams, therefore, one must
substitute for fear sexual excitement. The fear which has dius
come into existence, exercises now— not regularly, but often— a
selective influence on the dream-content and brings into the
dream ideational elements which seem suitable to diis fear for the
conscious and erroneous conception of the dream. This is, as has
been said, by no means regularly die case, for diere are anxiety
dreams in which die content is not at all frightful, in which,
dierefore, one cannot explain consciously the anxiety experienced.

I know that this explanation of fear in dreams sounds odd, and
is not easily believed; but I can only advise making friends with it.
It would, moreover, be remarkable if Norbert Hanold's dream al-
lowed itself to be connected with this conception of fear and to be

explained by it. We should dien say that in the dreamer, at night,
the erotic desire stirs, makes a powerful advance to bring his me-
mory of the beloved into consciousness and thus snatch him from
the delusion, experiences rejection and transformation into fear,
which now, on its part, brings the fearful pictures from the
academic memory of the dreamer into the dream-content. In this
way the peculiar unconscious content of the dream, the amorous
longing for the once known Zoe, is transformed into the manifest-
content of the destruction of Pompeii and the loss of Gradiva.

I think diat sounds quite plausible so far. One might jusdy de-
mand that if erotic wishes form die undisfigured content of this
dream, dien one must be able to point out, in die transformed
dream, at least a recognizable remnant of them hidden some-
where. Well, perhaps even this will come about with die help of a
suggestion which appeals later in die story. At die first meeting
with the supposed Gradiva, Hanold remembers this dream and
requests die apparition to lie down again as he has seen her.
Thereupon die young lady rises, indignant, and leaves her strange
companion, in whose delusion-ridden speech she has heard the
suggestion of an improper, erotic wish. I think we may adopt Gra-
diva's interpretation; even from a real dream one cannot always
demand more definiteness for die representation of an erotic
wish.

Thus die application of some rules of dream-interpretation
[has] been successful on Hanold's first dream, in making diis
dream comprehensible to us in its chief features, and in fitting it
into die sequence of die story. Then it must probably have been
produced by its audior widi due consideration for these rules.
One could raise only one more question: why the author should
introduce a dream for furdier development of the delusion. Well,
I think diat is very cleverly arranged and again keeps faith with
reality. We have already heard diat in actual illness the formation
of a delusion is very often connected with a dream, but after our
explanation of die nature of dreams, we need find no new riddle
in this fact. Dreams and delusion spring from the same source, die
repressed; the dream is, so to speak, the physiological delusion of
the normal human being. Before the repressed has become strong
enough to push itself up into waking life as delusion, it may easily
have won its first success under die more favorable circumstances
of sleep, in the form of a dream having after-effects. During sleep,
with the diminution of psychic activity, there enters a slackening in
the strength of die resistance, which the dominant psychic forces
oppose to the repressed. This slackening is what makes the
dream-formation possible and dierefore the dream becomes, for
us, die best means of approach to knowledge of die unconscious
psyche. Only die dream usually passes rapidly with the

reestablishment of the psychic revival of waking life, and the
ground won by the unconscious is again vacated.

Ill

IN die further course of the story there is another dream,
which can tempt us, even more perhaps than die first, to try to
interpret it and fit it into the psychic life of die hero; but we save
little if we leave die representation of die audior of "Gradiva"
here, to hasten directly to this second dream, for whoever wishes
to interpret die dream of another, cannot help concerning himself,
as extensively as possible, with every subjective and objective ex-
perience of the dreamer. Therefore it would be best to hold to the
thread of the story and provide this with our commentaries as we
progress.

The new delusion of the death of Gradiva at die destruction of
Pompeii in the year 79 is not die only after-effect of die first
dream analyzed by us. Directly afterwards Hanold decides upon a
trip to Italy, which finally takes him to Pompeii. Before this, how-
ever, somediing else has happened to him; leaning from his win-
dow, he thinks he sees on the street a figure with die bearing and
walk of his Gradiva, hastens after her, in spite of his scanty attire,
does not overtake her, but is driven back by die jeers of die peo-
ple on die street. After he has returned to his room, the song of a
canary whose cage hangs in the window of the opposite house calls
fordi in him a mood such as if he wished to get from prison into
freedom, and the spring trip is immediately decided upon and ac-
complished.

Our audior has put this trip of Hanold's in an especially strong
light, and has given to die latter partial clearness about his sub-
jective processes. Hanold has, of course, given himself a scientific
purpose for his journey, but this is not substantial. Yet he knows
that die "impulse to travel has originated in a nameless feeling." A
peculiar resdessness makes him dissatisfied with everything he
encounters and drives him from Rome to Naples, from diere to
Pompeii, without his mood's being set right, even at the last halt-
ing-place. He is annoyed by the foolishness of honeymoon travel-
ers, and is enraged over die boldness of house-flies, which pop-
ulate the hotels of Pompeii; but finally he does not deceive himself
over die fact diat "his dissatisfaction was certainly not caused by
his surroundings alone, but, to a degree, found its origin in him."
He considers himself over-excited, feels "that he was out of sorts
because he lacked something without being able to explain what,
and this ill-humor he took everywhere with him." In such a mood
he is enraged even at his mistress, science; as he wanders for die
first time in the glow of the midday sun through Pompeii, all his
science [has] left him without the least desire to rediscover it; "he
remembered it as from a great distance, and he felt that it had
been an old, dried-up, boresome aunt, dullest and most super-
fluous creature in die world."

In this uncomfortable and confused state of mind, one of the
riddles which are connected with this journey is solved for him at
the moment when he first sees Gradiva walking through Pompeii;
"he became conscious for the first time that he had, without him-
self knowing the motive in his heart, come to Italy on that account
and had, without stop, continued from Rome and Naples to Pom-
peii to see if he could here find trace of her— and that in a literal
sense,— for, with her unusual gait, she must have left behind in the
ashes a foot-print different from all the others."

As our author has put so much care into die delineation of this
trip, it must be worth our while to explain its relation to Hanold's
delusion and its place in the sequence of events. The journey is
undertaken for motives which the character does not at first re-
cognize and does not admit until later, motives which our author
designates directly as "unconscious." This is certainly true to life;
one does not need to have a delusion to act thus; rather it is an
everyday occurrence, even for normal people, that they are de-
ceived about the motives of their actions and do not become con-
scious of them until subsequently when a conflict of several emo-
tional currents reestablishes for them the condition for such con-
fusion. Hanold's trip, therefore, was intended, from the beginning,
to serve the delusion, and was to take him to Pompeii to continue
there the search for Gradiva. Let us remember that before, and
directly after the dream, this search filled his mind and that the
dream itself was only a stifled answer of his consciousness to the
question of the whereabouts of Gradiva. Some force which we do
not recognize, however, next prevents the plan of the delusion
from becoming conscious, so that only insufficient pretexts, which
can be but partially revived, remain as a conscious motivation for
the trip. The author gives us another riddle by having the dream,
the discovery of the supposed Gradiva on the street, and the de-
cision to make the journey because of the influence of the singing
canary follow one another like chance occurrences without inner
coherence.

With the help of the explanations which we gather from the
later speeches of Zoe Bertgang, this obscure part of the tale is il-
luminated for our understanding. It was really the original of Gra-
diva, Miss Zoe, herself, whom Hanold saw from his window
walking on the street, and whom he would soon have overtaken.
The statement of the dreamer— "she is really living now in the pre-
sent, in the same city with you,"— would, therefore, by a lucky
chance, have experienced an irrefutable corroboration, before
which his inner resistance would have collapsed. The canary, how-
ever, whose song impelled Hanold to go away, belonged to Zoe,
and his cage was in her window, in the house diagonally opposite
from Hanold's. Hanold, who, according to the girl's [statement]
was endowed with negative hallucination, understood the art of

not seeing nor recognizing people, and must from the beginning,
have had unconscious knowledge of what we do not discover until
later. The signs of Zoe's proximity, her appearance on the street,
and her bird's song so near his window intensify the effect of the
dream, and in this condition, so dangerous for his resistance to the
eroticism, he takes flight. The journey arises from the recovery of
the resistance after that advance of erotic desire in die dream, an
attempt at flight from die living and present beloved. It means
practically a victory for repression, which, this time, in die de-
lusion keeps the upper hand, as, in his former action, die "pe-
destrian investigations" of women and girls, the eroticism had
been victorious. Everywhere, however, die indecision of die strug-
gle, die compromise nature of die results was evident; die trip to
Pompeii, which is to take him away from the living Zoe leads, at
any rate, to her substitute, Gradiva. The journey, which is under-
taken in defiance of the most recent dream-thoughts, follows,
however, the order of the manifest dream-content to Pompeii.
Thus delusion triumphs anew every time that eroticism and re-
sistance struggle anew.

This conception of Hanold's trip, as a flight from the erotic
desire for the beloved, who is so near, which is awakening in him,
harmonizes, however, with the frame of mind portrayed in him
during his stay in Italy. The rejection of die eroticism, which domi-
nates him, expresses itself there in his abhorrence of honeymoon
travelers. A little dream in the "albergo" in Rome, caused by the
proximity of a couple of German lovers, "Augustus" and
"Gretchen," whose evening conversation he is forced to overhear
through die thin partition, casts a further light on the erotic tend-
encies of his first great dream. The new dream transports him
again to Pompeii where Vesuvius is just having anodier eruption,
and dius refers to the dream which continues active during his
trip; but among die imperiled people he sees this time— not as
before himself and Gradiva— but Apollo Belvedere and the
Capitoline Venus,— doubtiess ironic exaltation of the couple in the
adjoining room. Apollo lifts Venus, carries her away, and lays her
on an object in the dark, which seems to be a carriage or a cart, for
a "rattiing sound" comes from it. Otherwise die dream needs no
special skill for its interpretation.

Our autiior, whom we have long relied on not to make a single
stroke in his picture idly and without purpose, has given us an-
odier bit of testimony for die non-sexual force dominating Han-
old on the trip. During hours of wandering in Pompeii, it happens
that "remarkably, it did not once appear in his memory that he
had dreamed some time ago that he had been present at the
destruction of Pompeii by the volcanic eruption of 79." At sight of
Gradiva he first suddenly remembers this dream, and at die same
time the motive of the delusion for his puzzling journey becomes

conscious. Then what other meaning could there be for forgetting
the dream, this repression-boundary between die dream and the
psychic condition of die journey, dian diat die journey is not the
result of die direct instigation of the dream, but of die rejection of
this latter, as the emanation from a psychic force which desires no
knowledge of the secret meaning of the dream?

On die other hand, however, Hanold is not happy at diis vic-
tory over his eroticism. The suppressed psychic impulse remains
strong enough to revenge itself, by discontent and interception, on
the suppressing agency. His longing has changed to restlessness
and dissatisfaction, which make the trip seem senseless to him.
His insight into the motivation of his trip is obstructed in sendee of
the delusion; his relation to science, which ought, in such a place,
to stir all his interest, is upset. So our autiior shows his hero, after
flight from love, in a sort of crisis, in an utterly confused and un-
settled condition, in a derangement such as usually appears at the
climax of illness if neidier of the two struggling forces is so much
stronger than the odier diat die difference could establish a strict,
psychic regime. Here then our autiior takes hold to help and to
settie, for, at this place, he introduces Gradiva, who undertakes the
cure of die delusion. Widi his power to direct to a happy solution
the fortunes of all the characters created by him, in spite of all the
requirements which he has them conform to, he transports the
girl, from whom Hanold has fled to Pompeii, to that very place
and tiius corrects die folly which the delusion caused the young
man to commit in leaving the home -city of his beloved for die
dead abode of the one substituted for her by his fancy.

With the appearance of Zoe Bertgang as Gradiva, which marks
die climax of die suspense of die story, our interest is soon divert-
ed. If we have hitherto been living through the developments of a
delusion, we shall now become witnesses of its cure, and may ask
ourselves if our autiior has merely invented the procedure of this
cure or has carried it out according to actually existing possibilities.
From Zoe's own words in die conversation with her friend, we
have decidedly the right to ascribe to her the intention to cure die
hero. But how does she go about it? After she has cast aside die
indignation which the unreasonable request, to lie down to sleep
again, as "dien," had evoked in her, she appears again next day, at
die same place, and elicits from Hanold all die secret knowledge
that was lacking to her for an understanding of his conduct of the
previous day. She learns of his dream, of die bas-relief of Gradiva,
and of die peculiarity of walk which she shares widi die relief. She
accepts the role of a spirit awakened to life for a short hour,
which, she observes, his delusion assigns to her, and in ambiguous
words, she gendy puts him in die way of a new role by accepting
from him die grave-flower which he had brought along without

conscious purpose, and expresses regret that he has not given her
roses.

Our interest in the conduct of the eminently clever girl, who
has decided to win the lover of her youth as husband, after she has
recognized his love behind his delusion as its impelling force, is,
however, restrained at this place probably because of the strange
feelings that the delusion can arouse even in us. Its latest develop-
ment, that Gradiva, who was buried in the year 79, can now ex-
change conversation widi him as a noon-spirit, for an hour, after
the passing of which she sinks out of sight or seeks her grave again,
this chimera, which is not confused by the perception of her mo-
dern foot-covering, nor by her ignorance of die ancient tongues,
nor by her command of German, which did not exist in former
times, seems indeed to justify the author's designation, "A Pom-
peiian Fancy," but to exclude every standard of clinical reality; and
yet on closer consideration die improbability in this delusion
seems to me, for the most part, to vanish. To be sure, our audior
has taken upon himself a part of the blame, and in the first part of
die story has offered die fact that Zoe was die image of die bas-
relief in every trait. One must, dierefore, guard against transferring
the improbability of this preliminary to its logical conclusion diat
Hanold considers the girl to be Gradiva come to life. The ex-
planation of die delusion is here enhanced by die fact diat our
author has offered us no rational disposal of it. In the glowing sun
of the Campagna and in die bewildering magic powers of die vine
which grows on Vesuvius, our author has introduced helpful and
mitigating circumstances of die transgression of die hero. The
most important of all explanatory and exonerating considerations
remains, however, the facility with which our intellect decides to
accept an absurd content if impulses with a strong emotional stress
find thereby dieir satisfaction. It is astonishing, and generally
meets with too little acceptance, how easily and often intelligent
people, under such psychological constellations, give die reactions
of partial mental weakness, and any one who is not too conceited
may observe this in himself as often as he wishes, and especially
when a part of die thought-processes under consideration is con-
nected with unconscious or repressed motives. I cite, in this con-
nection, die w r ords of a philosopher who writes to me, "I have also
begun to make note of cases of striking mistakes, from my own ex-
perience, and of thoughtless actions which one subsequently
explains to [oneself] (in a very unreasonable way). It is amazing
but typical how much stupidity thereby comes to light." Now let us
consider die fact diat belief in spirits, apparitions and returning
souls (which finds so much support in the religions to which, at
least as children, we have all clung) is by no means destroyed
among all educated people, and diat many otherwise reasonable
people find their interest in spiritism compatible with dieir reason.

Yes, even one become dispassionate and incredulous may per-
ceive with shame how easily he turns back for a moment to a be-
lief in spirits, when emotions and perplexity concur in him. I know
of a physician who had once lost a patient by Basedow's disease"
and could not rid himself of the slight suspicion that he had per-
haps contributed by unwise medication to the unfortunate out-
come. One day several years later there stepped into his office a
girl, in whom, in spite of all reluctance, he was obliged to recog-
nize die dead woman. His only thought was that it was true that
the dead could return, and his fear did not give way to shame until
die visitor introduced herself as die sister of die woman who had
died of that disease. Basedow's disease lends to those afflicted with
it a great similarity of features, which has often been noticed, and
in this case die typical resemblance was far more exaggerated than
the family resemblance. The physician, moreover, to whom this
happened was I, and therefore I am not inclined to quarrel with
Norbert Hanold over the clinical possibility of his short delusion
about Gradiva, who had returned to life. That in serious cases of
chronic delusion (paranoia) die most extreme absurdities, ingen-
iously devised and well supported, are active is, finally, well-known
to every psychiatrist.

After his first meeting with Gradiva, Norbert Hanold had
drunk his wine in first one, and then another of the hotels of Pom-
peii known to him, while the other guests were having their regular
meals. "Of course, in no way had the absurd supposition entered
his mind" tiiat he was doing this to find out what hotel Gradiva
lived and ate in, but it is hard to say what odier significance his act-
ion could have. On die day after his second meeting in Meleager's
house, he has all sorts of remarkable and apparently disconnected
experiences; he finds a narrow cleft in die wall of die portico
where Gradiva had disappeared, meets a foolish lizard-catcher,
who addresses him as an acquaintance, discovers a secluded hotel,
die Albergo del Sole, whose owner talks him into buying a metal
brooch encrusted with green patina, which had been found with
the remains of a Pompeiian girl, and finally notices in his own ho-
tel a newly-arrived, young couple, whom he diagnoses to be
brodier and sister, and congenial. All these impressions are then
woven into a "remarkably nonsensical" dream as follows:

"Somewhere in die sun Gradiva sat making a trap out of a
blade of grass in order to catch a lizard, and she said, 'Please stay
quite still— my colleague is right; die method is really good and she
has used it with die greatest success.'"

To this dream he offers resistance even while sleeping, with
die critique tiiat it is indeed die most utter madness and he casts
about to free himself from it. He succeeds in doing this, too, with
the aid of an invisible bird who utters a short, merry call, and car-
ries the lizard away in his beak.

Shall we risk an attempt to interpret this dream also, that is, to
substitute for it the latent thoughts from whose disfigurement it
must have proceeded? It is as nonsensical as one could expect a
dream to be and this absurdity of dreams is the mainstay of the
view which denies to the dream die character of a valid psychic
act, and has it proceed from a desultory stimulus of the psychic
elements.

We can apply to this dream the technique which can be
designated as the regular procedure of dream-interpretation. It
consists in disregarding the apparent sequence in the manifest
dream but in examining separately every part of the content, and
in seeking its derivation in the impressions, memories and free
ideas of the dreamer. As we can not examine Hanold, however,
we must be satisfied with reference to his impressions, and may
with due caution substitute our own ideas for his.

"Somewhere in the sun Gradiva sat catching lizards, and
said,". What impression of the day is this part of the dream
reminiscent of? Unquestionably of the meeting with the older
man, the lizard-catcher, for whom Gradiva is substituted in the
dream. He was sitting or lying on a "hot, sunny" slope and spoke
to Hanold, too. Even the utterances of Gradiva in the dream are
copied from those of the man. Let us compare: '"the method sug-
gested by my colleague, Eimer, is really good; I have already used
it often with the best of success. Please remain quite still.'"— Quite
similarly Gradiva speaks in the dream, only that for the colleague,
Eimer, is substituted an unnamed woman-colleague; the often
from die zoologist's speech is missing in die dream, and the
connection between the statements has been somewhat changed.
It seems, therefore, diat this experience of the day has been trans-
formed into a dream by some changes and disfigurements. Why
tiius, and what is the meaning of die disfigurements, die sub-
stitution of Gradiva for die old gentleman, and the introduction of
the puzzling "woman-colleague"?

There is a rule of dream-interpretation as follows: A speech
heard in a dream always originates from a speech eitiier heard or
uttered in waking life. Well, this rule seems followed here; die
speech of Gradiva is only a modification of a speech heard in the
daytime from die zoologist. Anodier rule of dream-interpretation
would tell us that the substitution of one person for another, or the
mixture of two people by showing one in a position which char-
acterizes die other means equivalence of die two people, a cor-
respondence between them. Let us venture to apply this rule also
to our dream; then the interpretation would follow: "Gradiva
catches lizards, as that old gentleman does, and like him, is skilled
in lizard-catching." This result is not comprehensible yet, but we
have anodier riddle before us. To which impression of die day
shall we refer the "woman colleague," who is substituted in the

dream for the famous zoologist, Eimer? We have here fortunately
not much choice; only one other girl can be meant by "woman-
colleague," the congenial young lady in whom Hanold has conjec-
tured a sister traveling with her brother. "In her gown she wore a
red Sorrento rose, the sight of which, as he looked across from his
corner, stirred something in his memory without his being able to
think what it was." This observation on the part of the author
surely gives us the right to assert diat she is the "woman-colleague"
of the dream. What Hanold cannot remember is certainly nothing
but the remark of the supposed Gradiva, as she asked him for the
grave-flower, that to more fortunate girls one brought roses in
spring. In this speech, however, lay a hidden wooing. What kind
of lizard-catching is it that this more fortunate woman-colleague
has been so successful with?

On die next day Hanold surprises the supposed brodier and
sister in tender embrace and can dius correct his mistake of the
previous day. They are really a couple of lovers, on their honey-
moon, as we later learn, when the two disturb, so unexpectedly,
Hanold's third meeting with Zoe. If we will now accept the idea
that Hanold, who consciously considers diem brother and sister,
has, in his unconscious, recognized at once their real relation,
which on the next day betrays itself so unequivocally, there results
a good meaning for Gradiva's remark in die dream. The red rose
then becomes a symbol for being in love; Hanold understands that
die two are as Gradiva and he are soon to be; the lizard-catching
acquires die meaning of husband-catching and Gradiva's speech
means somediing like this: "Let me arrange things; I know how to
win a husband as w r ell as this other girl does."

Why must this penetration of Zoe's intentions appear through-
out in die form of the speech of die old zoologist? Why is Zoe's
skill in husband-catching represented by diat of die old man in
lizard-catching? Well, it is easy for us to answer that question; we
have long ago guessed that die lizard-catcher is none odier dian
the professor of zoology, Bertgang, Zoe's father, who must, of
course, also know Hanold, so that it is a matter of course diat he
addresses Hanold as an acquaintance. Again, let us accept die idea
that Hanold, in his unconscious, immediately recognizes die pro-
fessor,— "It seemed to him dimly diat he had already seen die face
of the lizard-hunter probably in one of die two hotels." Thus is
explained the strange cloaking of the purpose attributed to Zoe.
She is the daughter of the lizard-catcher; she has inherited this skill
from him. The substitution of Gradiva for die lizard-catcher in the
dream-content is, die re fore, the representation of the relation be-
tween the two people, which was recognized by the unconscious;
the introduction of "woman-colleague" in place of colleague,
Eimer, allows the dream to express comprehension of her court-
ship of die man. The dream has welded two of die day's experi-

ences in one situation, "condensed" as we say, in order to procure,
to be sure, very indiscernible expression for two ideas which are
not allowed to become conscious; but we can go on diminishing
the strangeness of the dream still more and pointing out the influ-
ence of other experiences of the day on the formation of the
manifest dream.

Dissatisfied by the former information, we might explain why
the scene of the lizard-catching was made the nucleus of the
dream, and suppose that the other elements in the dream-
thoughts influence the term "lizard" in the manifest dream. It
might really be very easy. Let us recall that Hanold has discovered
a cleft in the wall, in the place where Gradiva seems to him to
disappear; this is "wide enough to afford passage to an unusually
slender figure." By this perception he is forced in the day-time to
an alteration in his delusion; Gradiva did not sink into the ground
when she disappeared from his sight, but was going back, by this
route, to her grave. In his unconscious thought he might say to
himself that he had now found the natural explanation for the
surprising disappearance of the girl; but must not forcing one's self
through narrow clefts, and disappearing in such clefts recall the
conduct of lizards? Does not Gradiva herself, then, in this con-
nection, behave like an agile, little lizard? We think, therefore,
that the discovery of this cleft in the wall had worked as a determi-
nant on the choice of the "lizard" element for the manifest dream-
content; the lizard-situation of the dream, therefore, represented
this impression of the day, and the meeting with the zoologist,
Zoe's father.

What if, become bold, we now wished to attempt to find in the
dream-content a representation also for the one experience of the
day which has not yet been turned to account, the discovery of the
third hotel, "del Sole"? Our author has treated this episode so ex-
haustively and linked so much with it, w r e should be surprised if it,
alone, had yielded no contribution to the dream-formation. Han-
old enters this hotel, which, because of its secluded situation and
its distance from the station, has remained unknown to him, to get
a bottle of lime-water for congestion of blood. The hotel-keeper
uses this opportunity to extol his antiques and shows him a brooch
which, it was alleged, had belonged to that Pompeiian girl who was
found near the Forum in fond embrace with her lover. Hanold,
who had never before believed this frequently repeated story, is
now compelled, by a force strange to him, to believe in the truth
of this touching story and in the genuineness of the article found,
buys the brooch and leaves the hotel with his purchase. In passing,
he sees nodding down at him from one of the windows a cluster of
white, asphodel blossoms which had been placed in a water-glass,
and he feels that this sight is an attestation of the genuineness of
his new possession. The sincere conviction is now impressed

upon him that the green brooch belonged to Gradiva, and that she
was the girl who died in her lover's embrace. The tormenting
jealousy, which thereupon seizes him, he appeases with the reso-
lution to assure himself about this suspicion, the next day, from
Gradiva, herself, by showing the brooch. This is a strange bit of
new delusion; and shouldn't any trace point to it in the dream of
the following night?

It will be well worth our while to get an understanding of the
origin of this augmentation of the delusion, to look up the new un-
conscious idea for which the new bit of delusion is substituted.
The delusion originates under the influence of the proprietor of
the Sun Hotel, toward whom Hanold conducts himself in so re-
markably credulous a manner, as if he has received a suggestion
from him. The proprietor shows him a small metal brooch as gen-
uine, and as the possession of that girl who was found in the arms
of her lover, buried in the ashes, and Hanold, who could be criti-
cal enough to doubt the truth of the story as well as the gen-
uineness of the brooch, is caught, credulous, and buys the more
than doubtful antique. It is quite incomprehensible why he should
act so, and no hint is given that the personality of the proprietor
himself might solve this riddle for us. There is, however, another
riddle in this incident, and two riddles sometimes solve each
other. On leaving the "albergo," he catches sight of an asphodel
cluster in a glass at a window, and finds in it an attestation of the
genuineness of the metal brooch. How can that be? This last
stroke is fortunately easy of solution. The white flower is, of
course, the one which he presented to Gradiva at noon, and it is
quite right that through the sight of it at one of the windows of this
hotel, something is corroborated, not the genuineness of the
brooch, but something else which has become clear to him at the
discovery of this formerly overlooked "albergo." In the forenoon
he has already acted as if he were seeking, in the two hotels of
Pompeii, where the person lived who appeared to him as Gradiva.
Now, as he stumbles so unexpectedly upon a third, he must say in
the unconscious: "So she lives here"; and then, on leaving: "Right
there is the asphodel flower I gave her; that is, therefore, her win-
dow." This, then, is the new idea for which the delusion is sub-
stituted, and which cannot become conscious because its assump-
tion that Gradiva is living, a person known by him, cannot become
conscious.

How then is the substitution of the delusion for the new idea
supposed to have occurred? I think thus: that the feeling of con-
viction which clung to the idea was able to assert itself and per-
sisted, while another ideational content related to it by thought-
connection acted as substitute for the idea itself which was incapa-
ble of consciousness. Thus the feeling of conviction was con-
nected with a really strange content, and this latter attained, as de-

lusion, a recognition which did not belong to it. Hanold transfers
his conviction that Gradiva lives in this house to other impressions
which he receives in this house, becomes, in a way, credulous
about what the proprietor says, the genuineness of the metal
brooch, and the trutii of the anecdote about the lovers found in an
embrace, but only by this route, that he connects what he has
heard in this house with Gradiva. The jealousy which has been ly-
ing ready in him gets possession of this material, and even in con-
tradiction to his first dream there appears the delusion that Gra-
diva was die girl who died in the arms of her lover, and that the
brooch which he bought belonged to her.

We notice diat die conversation with Gradiva, and her gentle
wooing "through die flower" have already evoked important
changes in Hanold. Traits of male desire, components of the libi-
do are awakened in him, which, to be sure, cannot yet dispense
with the concealment through conscious pretexts; but die problem
of the corporeal nature of Gradiva, which has pursued him this
whole day, cannot disavow its derivation from the erotic desire of
the young man for possession of the woman, even if it is dragged
into die scientific world by conscious stress on Gradiva's peculiar
hovering between life and death. Jealousy is an added mark of
Hanold's awakening activity in love; he expresses this at the open-
ing of the conversation on die next day, and with die aid of a new
pretext achieves his object of touching the girl's body, and of
striking her, as in times long past.

Now, however, it is time to ask if the course of delusion-
formation which we have inferred from our audior's representa-
tion is one odierwise admitted or possible. From my experience as
physician, I can answer only that it is surely the right way, perhaps
die only one, in which the delusion receives die unswerving recog-
nition due its clinical character. If die patient believes in his delu-
sion so firmly, it does not happen because of inversion of his pow-
ers of judgment, and does not proceed from what is erroneous in
the delusion; but in every delusion diere lies also a little grain of
trutii; diere is somediing in it which really deserves belief, and this
is the source of the conviction of the patient, who is, to this extent,
justified. This true element, however, has been repressed for a
long time; if it finally succeeds in pushing into consciousness (this
time in disfigured form), the feeling of a conviction clinging to it,
as if in compensation, is over-strong and now clings to and pro-
tects die disfigurement-substitute of the repressed, true element
against every critical impugnment. The conviction at once shifts it-
self from die unconscious, true element to die conscious, errone-
ous one connected with it, and remains fixed diere as a result of
this very displacement. The case of delusion-formation which re-
sulted from Hanold's first dream is nothing but a similar, if not
identical, case of such displacement. Yes, die depicted manner of

development of conviction in the delusion is not fundamentally
different from the way in which conviction is formed in normal
cases, where repression does not enter into play. All our convic-
tions lie in thought-contents in which the true and the false are
combined and they stretch over the former and the latter. They
differentiate at once between the true and whatever false is associ-
ated with it and protect this, even if not so immutably as in the
delusion, against merited critique. Associations, protection,
likewise, have their own value even for normal psychology.

I will now return to the dream and lay stress on a small, but
not uninteresting feature which establishes a connection between
two occasions of the dream. Gradiva had placed the white aspho-
del flower in definite contrast to the red rose; the finding of the
asphodel flower again in the window of the Albergo del Sole
becomes a weighty proof for Hanold's unconscious idea which ex-
presses itself in a new delusion; and to this is added the fact that
the red rose in the dress of the congenial young girl helps Hanold
again, in the unconscious, to a right estimation of her relation to
her companion so that he can have her enter the dream as "wom-
an colleague."

But where in the manifest dream-content is found the trace
and representation of that discovery of Hanold's for which we find
that the new delusion is substituted, the discovery that Gradiva
lives with her father in the third hotel of Pompeii, the Albergo del
Sole, which he has not been acquainted with? Well, it stands in its
entirety and not even much disfigured in the dream; but I dread to
point it out, for I know that even with the readers whose patience
with me has lasted so long, a strong opposition to my attempts at
interpretation will be stirred up. Hanold's discovery is given in full
in the dream-content, I repeat, but so cleverly concealed that one
must needs overlook it. It is hidden there behind a play on words,
an ambiguity. "Somewhere in the sun Gradiva sat"; this we have
rightly connected with the locality where Hanold met the
zoologist, her father; but can it not also mean in the "Sun," that is,
in the Albergo del Sole, in the Sun Hotel Gradiva lives? And
doesn't the "somewhere" which has no reference to the meeting
with her father sound so hypocritically indefinite for the very rea-
son that it introduces the definite information about the where-
abouts of Gradiva? According to previous experience in the
interpretation of real dreams, I am quite sure of such a meaning in
the ambiguity, but I should really not venture to offer this bit of
interpretation to my readers, if our author did not lend me here
his powerful assistance. On the next day he puts into the mouth of
the girl, when she sees the metal brooch, the same pun which we
accept for the interpretation of the dream-content. '"Did you find
it in the sun, perhaps? It brings to light many such works of art'";
and as Hanold does not understand the speech, she explains that

she means the Sun Hotel, which is called "Sole" here, whence the
supposed antique is also familiar to her.

And now may we make the attempt to substitute for Hanold's
"remarkably nonsensical" dream unconscious thoughts hidden be-
hind it and as unlike it as possible? It runs somewhat as follows:
"She lives in the Sun with her father; why is she playing such a
game with me? Does she wish to make fun of me? Or could it be
possible that she loves me and wishes me for a husband?" To this
latter possibility there now follows in sleep the rejection, "That is
the most utter madness," which is apparently directed against the
whole manifest dream.

Critical readers have now the right to inquire about the origin
of that interpolation, not formerly established, which refers to
being made fun of by Gradiva. To this "Traumdeutung" gives the
answer; if in dream-thoughts, taunts and sneers, or bitter contra-
dictions occur, they are expressed by the nonsensical course of the
manifest dream, through the absurdity in the dream. The latter
means, therefore, no paralysis of psychic activity, but is one of the
means of representation which the dream-work makes use of. As
always in especially difficult passages, our author here comes to
our assistance. The nonsensical dream has another postlude in
which a bird utters a merry call and takes away the lizard in his
beak. Such a laughing call Hanold had heard after Gradiva's
disappearance. It really came from Zoe who was shaking off the
melancholy seriousness of her lower world role; with this laugh
Gradiva had really derided him. The dream-picture, however, of
the bird carrying away the lizard may recall that other one in a
former dream in which Apollo Belvedere carried away the
Capitoline Venus.

Perhaps the impression now exists with many readers that the
interpretation of the lizard-catching situation by the idea of wooing
is not sufficiently justified. Additional support is found here, per-
haps in the hint that Zoe, in conversation with her colleague, ad-
mits about herself that very thing which Hanold's thoughts sup-
pose about her, when she tells that she had been sure of "digging
up" something interesting for herself here in Pompeii. She thereby
delves into the archaeological series of associations as he did into
the zoological with his allegory of lizard-catching, as if they were
opposing each other and each wished to assume properties of the
other.

Thus we have finished the interpretation of the second dream.
Both have become accessible to our understanding under the
presupposition that the dreamer, in his unconscious thought,
knows all that he has forgotten in his conscious, has in the former
rightly judged everything which, in the latter, he delusively mis-
construes. In this connection we have, of course, been obliged to
make many assertions which sounded odd to the reader because

they were strange to him and probably often awakened the suspi-
cion that we were giving out as our author's meaning what is only
our own meaning. We are ready to do everything to dissipate this
suspicion and will therefore gladly consider more exhaustively one
of the most knotty points— I mean the use of ambiguous words
and speeches as in the example, "Somewhere in the Sun Gradiva
sat."

It must be striking to every reader of "Gradiva" how often our
author puts into the mouths of both the leading characters speech-
es which have double meaning. For Hanold these speeches are in-
tended to have only one meaning, and only his companion, Gra-
diva, is affected by their other meaning. Thus, after her first an-
swer, he exclaims: '"I knew that your voice sounded so,'" and the
yet unenlightened Zoe has to ask how that is possible, as he has
never before heard her speak. In the second conversation, the girl
is for a moment puzzled by his delusion, as he assures her that he
recognized her at once. She must understand these words in the
meaning that is correct for his unconscious, as his recognition of
their acquaintance which reaches back into childhood, while he, of
course, knows nothing of this meaning of his speech and explains
it only by reference to the delusion which dominates him. The
speeches of the girl, on the other hand, in whose person the most
brilliant mental clarity is opposed to the delusion, are made inten-
tionally ambiguous. One meaning of them falls in with the ideas of
Hanold's delusion, in order to enable her to penetrate into his
conscious comprehension, the other raises itself above the delu-
sion, and, as a rule, gives us the interpretation of it in the uncon-
scious truth which has been represented by it. It is a triumph of wit
to be able to represent the delusion and the truth in the same ex-
pression.

Interspersed with such ambiguities is Zoe's speech in which
she explains the situation to her girl friend and at the same time
rids herself of her disturbing society; it is really spoken out of the
book, calculated more for us readers than for her happy col-
league. In the conversations with Hanold, the double meaning is
chiefly established by the fact that Zoe makes use of the sym-
bolism which we find followed in Hanold's first dream, in the
equivalence of repression and destruction, Pompeii and child-
hood. Thus on the one hand she can, in her speeches, continue in
the role which Hanold's delusion assigns to her, on the other, she
can touch upon the real relations, and awaken in Hanold's uncon-
scious a knowledge of them.

'"I have long accustomed myself to being dead.'" '"For me, the
flower of oblivion is the right one from your hand.'" In these
speeches is given lightly the reproof which then breaks out clearly
enough in her last sermon when she compares him to an arch-
aeopteryx. '"That a person must die to become alive again; but for

archaeologists that is, of course, necessary,'" she continues after
the solution of the delusion as if to give us tire key to her am-
biguous speeches. The most beautiful symbolism appeals, how-
ever, in the question: '"It seems to me as if we had already eaten
our bread thus together once two thousand years ago. Can't you
remember it?'" In this speech the substitution of historic antiquity
for childhood, and the effort to awaken his memory of the latter
are quite unmistakable.

Whence, therefore, comes this striking preference for ambigu-
ous speeches in "Gradiva"? It seems to us not chance, but the
necessary sequence from tire preliminaries of tire tale. It is nothing
but tire counterpart of the twofold determination of symptoms in
so far as the speeches are themselves symptoms and proceed from
compromises between the conscious and the unconscious; but
one notices this double origin in the speeches more easily than in
the acts; and when, as the pliability of the material of conversation
often makes possible, each of the two intentions of a speech suc-
ceeds by the same arrangement of words in expressing itself well,
then there is present what we call an "ambiguity."

During the psychotherapeutic treatment of a delusion, or an
analogous disturbance, one often evolves such ambiguous speech-
es in patients as new symptoms of tire most fleeting duration, and
can even succeed in making use of them, whereby, with the mean-
ing intended for the consciousness of the patient, one can, not
infrequently, stimulate tire understanding for tire one valid in the
unconscious. I know from experience that among the uninitiated
this role of ambiguity usually gives the greatest offense, and causes
the grossest misunderstanding, but our author was right, at any
rate, in representing in his production this characteristic feature of
the processes of tire formation of dream and delusion.

IV

WITH Zoe's entrance as physician there is awakened in us,
we said, a new interest. We are eager to learn if such a cure as she
accomplishes on Hanold is comprehensible or possible, whether
our author has observed the conditions of the passing of a delu-
sion as correctly as those of its development.

Without doubt a view will be advanced denying to the case
portrayed by our author such a principal interest, and recognizing
no problem requiring an explanation. For Hanold nothing more
remains, it might be asserted, but to solve his delusion again, after
its object, the supposed Gradiva, conveys to him the incorrectness
of all his assertions and gives him the most natural explanations
for everything puzzling; for example, how she knows his name.
Thereby the affair would be settled logically; as, however, the girl
in this case has confessed her love, for the satisfaction of his femi-
nine readers, our author would surely allow the otherwise not un-
interesting story to end in the usually happy way, marriage. More
consistent, and just as possible, would have been the different con-
clusion the young scholar, after the explanation of his mistake,
should, with polite thanks, take his leave of the young lady and in
that way motivate the rejection of her love so that he might offer
an intense interest to ancient women of bronze or stone, or the
originals of these, if they were attainable, but might have no idea of
how to deal with a girl of flesh and blood of his own time. The
archaeological fancy was most arbitrarily cemented into a love-
story by our author, himself.

In discountenancing this conception as impossible, our atten-
tion is first called to the fact that we have to attribute the change
beginning in Norbert Hanold not to the relinquishment of the de-
lusion alone. At the same time, indeed before the solution of the
latter, there is in him an undeniable awakening of the desire for
love, which, of course, results in his asking for the hand of the girl
who has freed him from delusion. We have already shown under
what pretexts and cloakings, curiosity about her corporeal nature,
jealousy, and the brutal male impulse for possession are expressed
in him in the midst of the delusion, since repressed desire put the
first dream into his mind. Let us add the further testimony that in
the evening after the second talk with Gradiva a living woman for
the first time seems congenial to him, although he still makes the
concession to his abhorrence of honeymoon travelers, by not re-
cognizing the congenial girl as newly married. The next forenoon,
however, chance makes him witness of an exchange of caresses
between the girl and her supposed brother, and he draws back
shyly as if he had disturbed a holy ceremony. Disdain for "Au-

gustus" and "Gretchen" is forgotten and respect for love is restor-
ed to him.

Thus our autiior has connected die treatment of die delusion
and the breaking forth of the desire for love most closely with one
another, and prepared the outcome in a love-affair as necessary.
He knows die nature of die delusion even better dian his critics;
he knows diat a component of amorous desire has combined with
a component of resistance in the formation of the delusion, and
he has the girl who undertakes the cure discover in Hanold's delu-
sion die component referring to her. Only this insight can make
her decide to devote herself to treating him, only the certainty of
knowing herself loved by him can move her to confess to him her
love. The treatment consists in restoring to him, from without, the
repressed memories which he cannot release from within; it would
be ineffective if the dierapeutist did not consider the emotions;
and the interpretation of the delusion would not finally be: "See;
all that means only that you love me."

The procedure which our author has his Zoe follow for die
cure of die delusion of the friend of her youdi, shows a consider-
able resemblance, no, complete agreement, essentially, with a
therapeutic method which Dr. J. Breuer and die present writer
introduced into medicine in 1895, and to the perfection of which
the latter has since devoted himself. This method of treatment,
first called the "cadiartic" by Breuer, which the present writer has
preferred to designate as "analytic" consists in radier forcibly
bringing into die consciousness of the patients who suffer from
disturbances analogous to Hanold's delusion, die unconscious,
through die repression of which they have become ill, just as Gra-
diva does with die repressed memories of their childhood rela-
tions. To be sure, accomplishment of this task is easier for Gra-
diva than for die physician; she is, in this connection, in a position
which might be called ideal from many view-points. The physician
who does not fathom his patient in advance, and does not possess
within himself, as conscious memory, what is working in the
patient as unconscious, must call to his aid a complicated tech-
nique in order to overcome this disadvantage. He must learn to
gather with absolute certainty, from the patient's conscious ideas
and statements, die repressed material in him, to guess die un-
conscious, when it betrays itself behind the patient's conscious ex-
pressions and acts. The latter dien does something similar to what
Norbert Hanold did at the end of die story, when he re -translates
the name, Gradiva, into Bertgang. The disturbance disappears
then by being traced back to its origin; analysis brings cure at die
same time.

The similarity between the procedure of Gradiva and die
analytic mediod of psychodierapy is, however, not limited to these
two points, making the repressed conscious, and the concurrence

of explanation and cure. It extends itself to what proves the essen-
tial of the whole change, the awakening of the emotions. Ever} 7 dis-
turbance analogous to Hanold's delusion, which in science we
usually designate as a psychoneurosis, has, as a preliminary, the
repression of part of the emotional life, to speak boldly, of the sex-
impulse, and at every attempt to introduce the unconscious and
repressed cause of illness into consciousness, the emotional com-
ponent necessarily awakens to renewed struggle with the forces
repressing it, to adjust itself for final result, often under violent
manifestations of reaction. In reawakening, in consciousness, of
repressed love, the process of recuperation is accomplished when
we sum up all the various components of sex-impulse as "love"
and this reawakening is irremissible, for the symptoms on account
of which the treatment was undertaken are nothing but the pre-
cipitations of former struggles of repression and recurrence and
can be solved and washed away only by a new high-tide of these
very passions. Every psychoanalytic treatment is an attempt to free
repressed love, which has formed a miserable compromise-outlet
in a symptom. Yes, the conformity with the therapeutic process
pictured by the author in "Gradiva" reaches its height when we
add that even in analytical psychotherapy, the reawakened passion,
whether love or hate, chooses the person of the physician as its
object every time.

Then, of course, appear the differences which make the case
of Gradiva an ideal one such as the technique of physicians cannot
attain. Gradiva can respond to the love which is pushing through
from the unconscious into the conscious; the physician cannot;
Gradiva was herself the object of the former repressed love; her
person offers at once a desirable object to the freed erotic activity.
The physician has been a stranger, and after the cure must try to
become a stranger again; often he does not know how to advise
the cured patient to apply in life her regained capacity for love. To
suggest what resources and makeshifts the physician then employs
to approach with more or less success the model of a love -cure
which our author has drawn for us, would carry us too far away
from our present task.

Now, however, the last question which we have already evaded
answering several times. Our views about repression, the forma-
tion of delusion and related disturbances, the formation and inter-
pretation of dreams, the role of erotic life, and the manner of cure
for such disturbances are, of course, not by any means the com-
mon property of science, to say nothing of being the possession of
educated people. If the insight which makes our author able to
create his "Fancy" in such a way that we can analyze it like a real
history of disease has for its foundation the above-mentioned
knowledge, we should like to find out the source of it. One of the
circle who, as was explained at the beginning, was interested in the

dreams of "Gradiva" and their possible interpretation, put the
direct question to Wilhelm Jensen, whether any such similar the-
ories of science had been known to him. Our audior answered, as
was to be expected, in die negative, and radier testily. His imagina-
tion had put into his mind the "Gradiva" in whom he had his joy;
any one whom she did not please, might leave her alone. He did
not suspect how much she had pleased die readers.

It is easily possible diat our audior's rejection does not stop at
that. Perhaps he denies knowledge of the rules which we have
shown that he follows, and disavows all die intentions which we re-
cognized in his production; I do not consider this improbable;
then, however, only two possibilities remain. Either we have pre-
sented a true caricature of interpretation, by transferring to a
harmless work of art tendencies of which its creator had no idea,
and have thereby shown again how easy it is to find what one seeks
and what one is engrossed with, a possibility of which most strange
examples are recorded in the history of literature. Every reader
may now decide for himself whether he cares to accept such an ex-
planation; we, of course, hold fast to the other, still remaining
view. We think diat our audior needed to know nothing of such
rules and intentions, so that he may disavow diem in good faith,
and that we have surely found nothing in his romance which was
not contained in it. We are probably drawing from die same
source, working over the same material, each of us widi a different
method, and agreement in results seems to vouch for the fact that
both have worked correcdy. Our procedure consists of die con-
scious observation of abnormal psychic processes in others, in
order to be able to discover and express dieir laws. Our audior
proceeds in another way; he directs his attention to die uncon-
scious in his own psyche, listens to its possibilities of development
and grants diem artistic expression, instead of suppressing them
with conscious critique. Thus he learns from himself what we
learn from others, what laws die activity of this unconscious must
follow, but he does not need to express these laws, need not even
recognize diem clearly; they are, as a result of his intelligent pa-
tience, contained incarnate in his creatures. We unfold diese laws
by analysis of his fiction as we discover them from cases of real
illness, but die conclusion seems irrefutable, diat either both (our
author, as well as the physician) have misunderstood the uncon-
scious in the same way or we have both understood it correctly.
This conclusion is very valuable for us; for its sake, it was wordi
while for us to investigate the representation of the formation and
cure of delusion, as well as die dreams, in Jensen's "Gradiva" by
the metiiods of therapeutic psychoanalysis.

We have reached die end. An observant reader might remind
us diat, at die beginning, we had remarked diat dreams are wishes
represented as fulfilled and that we still owe the proof of it. Well,

we reply, our arguments might well show how unjustifiable it
would be to wish to cover the explanations which we have to give
of the dream with the formula that the dream is a wish-fulfilment;
but the assertion stands, and is also easy to demonstrate for the
dreams in "Gradiva." The latent dream-thoughts— we know now
what is meant by that— may be of numerous kinds; in "Gradiva"
they are day-remnants, thoughts which are left over unheard, and
not disposed of by the psychic activity of waking life. In order that
a dream may originate from them the cooperation of a— generally
unconscious— wish is required; this establishes the motive power
for the dream-formation; the day-remnants give the material for it.
In Norbert Hanold's first dream two wishes concur in producing
the dream, one capable of consciousness, the other, of course, be-
longing to the unconscious, and active because of repression. This
was the wish, comprehensible to every archaeologist, to have been
an eye-witness of that catastrophe of 79. What sacrifice would be
too great, for an [archaeologist] , to realize this wish otherwise than
through dreams! The other wish and dream-maker is of an erotic
nature: to be present when the beloved lies down to sleep, to ex-
press it crudely. It is the rejection of this which makes the dream
an anxiety-dream. Less striking are, perhaps, the impelling wishes
of the second dream, but if we recall its interpretation, we shall not
hesitate to pronounce it also erotic. The wish to be captured by
the beloved, to yield and surrender to her, as it may be construed
behind the lizard-catching, has really a passive masochistic char-
acter. On the next day the dreamer strikes the beloved, as if under
tlie sway of the antagonistic, erotic force; but w r e must stop or we
may forget that Hanold and Gradiva are only creatures of our au-
thor.

THE END

NOTES

'[ "Fried fish," an outdated German term for a teenaged girl].

* Freud: Tiaumdeutung, 1900. (Leipzig and Wien, 1911) translated [as] Interpretation of Dreams, N. Y, 1913.

! The case N.H. would have to be designated as hysterical, not paranoiac delusion. The marks of paranoia are

lacking here.

' ["to pay the debt with which we are charged by our birth" in the original] .

' See the important work by E. Bleuler, "Affektivitat, Suggestibilitat, Paranoia," translated by Dr. Charles Rick-

sher in N. Y. State Hospitals Bulletin, Feb., 1912, and Die diagnostischen Associationsstudien by C. Jung, both

Zurich, 1906.

Cf. Freud: Sammlung der kleiner Schriften zur Neurosenlehre, 1906. Translated in Nervous and Mental
Diseases Monograph Series No. 4. Selected Papers on Hysteria and other Psychoneuroses. N.Y. 1913.
Cf. Bruchstiick einer Hysterie-Analyse, 1905.

Cf. Breuer u. Freud, Studien tiber Hysterie, 190,5. Leipzig and Wien, translated in Nervous and Mental Dis-
eases Monograph Series No. 4. Selected Papers on Hysteria and other Psychoneuroses.

' Sante de Sanctis (1862-1935), I Sogni. (Original in Italian.) Translated into German, Die Traume, by Mr. Otto
Schmidt, 1901, Halle [an der Salle].

10 Cf. Sammlung kl. Schriften zur Neurosenlehre, V., and Tiaumdeutung, p. 344. Traumdeutung translated [as]
The Interpretation of Dreams, N.Y., 1913 (p. 441).

[i.e., Graves' disease)